


SOTE-ROTJ Redux

by jedipilot24



Category: Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi, Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Shadows of the Empire - Steve Perry
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-31
Updated: 2017-03-09
Packaged: 2018-09-20 03:28:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 35,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9473411
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedipilot24/pseuds/jedipilot24
Summary: Legends AU!: Han Solo has been freed from carbonite and he has many questions about what's happened while he's been frozen, such as how much has time has passed, why does Leia have a lightsaber, and who is that new redhead flirting with Luke? Han/Leia, Luke/Mara.





	1. Shadows of the Empire-Redux

**Author's Note:**

> Disclaimer: Disney owns it now, but I neither know nor care what they're vomiting out these days; I use only Legends in my fics, so the Imperial Palace is a separate building from the Jedi Temple; this fic also uses the 'soft retcon' of the 'Rise and Fall of Darth Vader' wherein Shira Brie's mission is re-dated to 1 ABY. Or, at least, that's my interpretation of why she was mentioned out of sequence.
> 
> "Always in motion, is the future, and many possible futures there are."  
> Jedi Master Yoda

**Now…Jabba the Hutt's Palace, Tatooine**

Han's eyes suddenly snapped open…and his world remained in total darkness. He blinked rapidly but couldn't tell the difference, and yet his head felt like it was spinning. His breathing came suddenly and heavily; Han had been frozen in a block of carbonite, which he remembered only as a timeless period—as if he had spent an eternity trying to breath, trying to move, trying to scream, but trapped in perpetual conscious, painful asphyxiation. And now that he could suddenly breath again, his senses assaulted him: the cold bit at his skin with icy teeth, his sight remained completely opaque, wind rushed around his ears; he couldn't tell up from down. Myriad smells filled his nose and made him nauseous, saliva filled his mouth, and every bone in his body ached. Then came the visions: his childhood on the Trader's Luck running scams for Garris Shrike, Ylesia, the Imperial Academy, saving Chewbacca's life, five years as a freelance smuggler, three years working for the Rebellion—all the images and memories of his life had been crammed into a balloon, which had then popped; the memories all burst out randomly in a single moment, nearly overwhelming him.

A lesser man would have gone utterly mad, but Solo managed to ride the surge of memories, images, and emotions until most of it settled down again; he recalled now the most recent memories: his crippled ship limping to Bespin on its backup hyperdrive, being betrayed by Lando Calrissian—whom he'd once called friend—his capture by Darth Vader and Boba Fett, and kissing Leia right before being frozen.

Strange hands touched him, accompanied by a strange voice—flat and metallic, "Just relax, for a moment," the voice, "You're free of the carbonite." Han managed to sit up and rubbed his eyes; still nothing. "Shh, you have hibernation sickness."

"I can't see," Han finally said.

"Your eyesight will return in time."

"Where am I?"

"Jabba's Palace."

Han grabbed at the source of the voice, feeling a hard mask with a rounded point, and drew back suddenly, "Who are you?"

A pause and then the voice changed into something softer and more feminine, "Someone who loves you."

"Leia," Han gasped and for one long, precious moment they kissed with the fervent urgency of lovers torn from each other and then reunited. "Come on," Leia finally said, helping Han to stand, "Let's get you out of here."

But then a booming laugh sounded. For a moment Han was confused, "What's that." The laugh boomed again and then Han recognized it, "I know that laugh." He turned towards it just in time to hear a curtain being slid aside, followed by an eruption of laughter from Jabba and the rest of his court. While Han strained to make out what Jabba was saying over the laughter of his court, a high pitched whine suddenly appeared and the booming laughter suddenly turned to cries of fear. Han felt Leia turning him and then was nearly knocked to the ground by a deafening explosion.

"What just happened?" Han asked,

"Thermal detonator," Leia said, "Wait, hold on for a moment." Leia let go of him and Han heard the hissing of a lightsaber activation, then heard it again and then a third time. Blaster fire echoed all around him, the lightsabers humming from the deflections and then several more sinister sounds—the lightsabers slicing through something…multiple somethings, or more likely _someones_. Then for a moment, all Han heard were the low thrumming of lightsabers, finally they shut off.

"What was _that_ all about?"

"Just a few thugs who didn't get the message," said Luke.

"Who's here besides you and Leia, kid?"

"Chewie, Lando, the droids and Mara Jade."

"Who?" Han demanded

"That would be me," a new voice said, also feminine, "A while back I saved Farmboy here from a pair of assassins and decided to stick around."

"It's a bit more complicated than that," said Luke.

Lando finally spoke, "A lot has happened since you were frozen."

Han restrained the urge to try and hit Lando, mostly because he still couldn't see anything, and instead asked, "How long?"

"Six months, give or take."

' _Six months.'_ A new chill crept up Han's spine; six months in carbonite. Six months trapped between life and death.

"Well, let's get out of here and you can catch me up on all the gossip."

As Leia and Lando guided Han's footsteps, he was able to make out Luke arguing with the still mysterious 'Mara Jade', whoever she was.

"You see, Farmboy, that's how to do an extraction—in and out with no fuss and one less Hutt crimelord in the galaxy."

"It still wasn't very Jedi," Luke said "We didn't even _try_ to negotiate."

"You know that would have been pointless," said Mara.

"Probably." Luke sighed. "But Jedi are still supposed to use diplomacy before resorting to violence."

"Normally I would too, but your plan had too many holes in it," Mara said, "too much left to chance."

"There is no luck," said Luke, "there is only the Force. I know that it would have worked out."

"You just want to see me in a skimpy slave dancer costume."

"Well, maybe I do," Luke admitted, "Is that a problem?"

"If it's just you, no," Mara replied, "but no way was I going to put on a show for a slimy piece of worm-ridden filth like Jabba."

Han couldn't resist chuckling. So, the kid had a new girlfriend; although Han still didn't know anything about her, he was already starting to like her.

Han felt the transition to the outside when the biting chill suddenly became a blistering, dry heat. Soon thereafter Leia eased Han into the seat of a speeder and they were off. The trip seemed to take forever, but finally they stopped. Leia helped Han out and guided him up a ramp back, back into blessed air conditioning.

"We're on the Falcon," Leia said, helping Han sit down again. At last he felt at home.

"So," Han finally said after they had lifted off and jumped to hyperspace, "Last I remember, we were all prisoners of Darth Vader."

Lando was the first to speak, "After Vader gave you to Fett, he ordered me to take Leia to his ship—under Stormtrooper escort of course."

"Of course," said Han, "So what happened?"

"I covertly signaled my aide, Lobot, who arranged for the Bespin Wing Guard to ambush the Stormtroopers. We took their guns and then Leia, Chewie and I went after you and Fett; then we fled the city aboard the Falcon."

"We were almost gone," said Leia, "When I heard Luke speak to me through the Force and suddenly I knew his location; naturally, I had Chewie and Lando turn the ship around to pick him up."

"I was dangling for my life from a weather vane on the underside of the city," Luke said, "I had just lost my right hand fighting Darth Vader and that was the only way to escape."

Lando continued, "We picked Luke up and fled to the Rebel fleet. We dropped him off to get medical attention and then Chewie and I left again to go hunt for Fett."

Leia picked up the story, "Luke, the droids and myself went to Tatooine a few days later to wait to hear from them."

"Just like that?" Han said, "The Alliance just let you go?"

"Yes, they did," said Leia, "To quote Admiral Ackbar, 'sometimes we must win the battle within ourselves before we fight the battle without'."

"Hmm, I didn't figure him for the romantic type," Han replied. "So, what's your story, Mara Jade?"

Mara said. "Up until about six months ago I was an assassin known as the Emperors' Hand."

"An assassin?" Han said, "working for the _Emperor_?"

"I was raised in the Imperial Palace to obey the Emperor unquestioningly. But I was also made to believe that I was the _only_ Hand, that I was someone…special; I was quite peeved when I found out that this wasn't actually true."

**Then…Six Months Ago, A Library in the Imperial Palace, Coruscant.**

Mara Jade sat in front of a computer console, pounding her fists into the table as she cursed up a storm:

"He told me I was the only one…the only Hand of the Emperor. His weapon of choice when he needed a scalpel rather than a sword…that lying, drooling, scum-swallowing, superannuated under-handed festering filth-sucking parasite!"

Mara had made this discovery just a few minutes ago and quite unexpectedly. It had all started when a few days ago when the Emperor had ordered her to kill Luke Skywalker. Following standard procedure, Mara had begun reading the rather extensive dossier that Imperial Intelligence had accumulated on the most notorious Rebel in the galaxy.

This had led to her shocking discovery when she'd read over a summary of a mission by an Imperial Intelligence agent named Shira Brie who had been sent by Darth Vader to infiltrate the Rebels and honeytrap Skywalker. Finding it odd that Vader would even think of such a tactic, suspicious of his motives for doing so, and interested in finding this agent to get an insiders perspective on Skywalker that would help her complete her mission, Mara had started digging for details about this mission and the agent's own dossier...and had learned even more than she could have possibly expected, for Major Shira Brie of Imperial Intelligence was also listed as an Emperor's Hand.

All her life Mara Jade had been told by the Emperor that the was the only Emperor's Hand and now she was staring at incontrovertible proof that that had been a lie.

_'All a lie!'_ A lie told to her for the sole purpose of feeding her ego by making her feel special. _'How much else of my life has been a lie?'_ Mara wondered.

Mara felt a tingle start to creep up her spine and, through the Force, she felt and heard the Emperor—but his presence no longer felt warm and reassuring—now that her eyes were opened, she could see that in fact it felt quite…cold and dark, almost like a black hole.

' _You lied to me! You told me that I was the only Hand!'_

' _I allowed you to believe something that made you more useful, but it doesn't matter. Your personal feelings are irrelevant as you exist only to serve me, and without me you are nothing.'_

"No," Mara whispered.

' _You will serve me, or you'll die.'_

Pain suddenly erupted from the Force link, like she was being stabbed a thousand needles. Mara collapsed to the ground, clutching her head in agony; but she refused to succumb, refused to give in.

"GET…OUT…OF…MY….HEAD!" Mara pushed back at their link that the Emperor was using to torture her; used the very training the Emperor had given her to close off her mind and pushed, channeling all her righteous anger, all her strength, all her will, all her life energy, all her years of training; with every fiber of her being, she _pushed_.

Then, just as suddenly as it appeared, the pain vanished, replaced by the weird sensation of something being snapped, like a cord after being stretched beyond its limits. And then Mara found herself all alone again, but it was different this time; she felt light-headed now, as if she'd carried a great burden for a so long and then had it suddenly removed.

Mara got to her feet and half-walked, half-staggered out the door, but hadn't gone far when her danger sense started going off. Imperial stormtroopers, which had moments ago walked past her uncaring, had now suddenly turned back towards her with their blasters raised.

Mara activated her lightsaber just in time to deflect the initial shots and ran.

**Now… The** **_Millennium Falcon_ ** **, Hyperspace**

"Whoa, whoa,' said Han, "Wait a minute, _Shira_ was an _Imperial spy_?"

"Yes," said Mara.

"Which means," Luke said, "that I _wasn't_ mistaken in shooting her down. But still—"

"Yeah, talk about _mind-screw_ , I never saw that coming. You sure know how to pick 'em, kid," Han said. For two years Luke had been living with the guilt that he'd accidentally shot down his girlfriend; to find out one day that the whole thing had been a lie... "So, Mara, how'd you escape and meet up with Luke?"

"I know many secret passages in the Imperial Palace," said Mara, "And while it's the most heavily fortified building on Coruscant, it's defenses are mostly geared towards keeping people out, not in. I disguised myself as a refugee and fled the planet in sub-steerage class on a freighter. It took a few weeks, but I eventually reached the place where I'd hidden my backup ship, a Suwantek TL-1800 that was once owned by some…mutual acquaintances of ours."

"Suwantek?" Han frowned, "The Hand of Judgment. How do you know them?"

"That's another story entirely," said Mara, "but suffice it to say that my duties as Emperor's Hand got me mixed up in both the Shelsha and Candoras incidents. At the end of the second one they just…vanished; I have no idea what happened to them, but whatever happened they left their ship behind, so I'd stashed it in some out of the way system in case I ever needed it again."

"I see," said Han,

**Then...Five Months Ago, the** **_Melnor Spear_ **

Mara paced deck of the Suwantek, clutching her head with her hands as she wrestled with her doubts—long simmering and deeply repressed, but now finally free to come forth. She remembered sensing through the Force the destructions of Despayre and Alderaan, remembered sensing all those millions of voices suddenly crying out in terror—and just as suddenly being silenced. At the time Mara had managed to rationalize it way, told herself that everyone on Despayre had been a criminal anyway and that Tarkin had exceeded his authority in destroying Alderaan. But now Mara had no choice but to accept the truths that had been staring at her in the face the whole time, truths that he hadn't seen because she hadn't _wanted_ to see them, had refused to think about them, but now...

_'The Emperor ordered the Death Star designed and built; he put Tarkin in command of it and removing him from command would have been as easy as saying two words to Vader, who was there the whole time.'_

But not only had Tarkin remained in command, but the Emperor had then given the command to build a stripped-down superlaser platform called 'the Tarkin'. A weapon mentioned in Skywalker's dossier because he had recently been involved in its destruction, which was how one Mara Jade had found out about it.

No matter what crimes the Organa family had committed, there was no possible justification for destroying the entire planet—including millions of innocent children. That was the whole reason the Emperor even had agents like her, to remove traitors and corrupt officials with the least amount of collateral damage. But apparently the Emperor saw no problem with destroying entire planets for the crimes of a handful of its people. And that was an evil that Mara could not ignore or condone.

She remembered other atrocities, like the Teardrop Massacre that had driven five good men into deserting the Empire and stealing this very ship.

No matter what Mara did now, she knew that she was going to be hunted by the Emperor; simply going on the run and wandering the galaxy alone would leave her exposed to being found and captured. The only way she would live now was for the Emperor to die, and if she had to do that she might as well join the Rebels. Although Mara still wasn't at all confident in just how effective a restored Republic would actually be, it would at least be better than any system which sanctioned terror and mundicide. The best part was that Mara already had the information needed to find the Rebels. Or, more specifically, one specific Rebel. Because although Mara did not know where Luke Skywalker was _now_ , she did know where he _would_ be. Eventually.

**Then…Five Months Ago, Anchorhead, Tatooine**

Mara had been in Anchorhead for several days before finally spotting Skywalker; she'd been trailing him, observing him in order to determine the best approach, when Skywalker suddenly stopped dead in his tracks and started looking around. Mara wondered if she'd been spotted but then noticed two beautiful women in dark clothing—unarmed but still looking deadly—approaching him.

Skywalker reached for the blaster at his side only for one of the woman to knock it out of his hands in the middle of his draw; and then they both attacked him with fists and feet. Skywalker was doing an impressive job of holding off their attacks, for someone with only marginal training in both the Force and martial arts, but he was still clearly getting the worst of it.

Mara drew her lightsaber and silently walked over toward the fight. One of the women managed to get Skywalker into a grapple while the other raised her fists for a killing blow. She never got to deliver it, for that was when Mara ignited her lightsaber; the blade emerged inside the second woman's chest, killing her instantly.

The first woman looked over at Mara, a momentary distraction that was all Skywalker needed to break free of the grapple. Mara followed through and sliced her in half before she could recover. Mara shut off her lightsaber and turned to Skywalker.

Luke eyed the red-haired woman who'd saved him curiously; there was something oddly familiar about her, almost as if he should recognize her but he couldn't quite place where. But more than that, not only did Luke find her physically attractive, there was something about her presence in the Force that seemed even more compelling. Her presence resonated and meshed with his own, with a kind of deep, slow thrum that hinted at the potential to become something more, something greater than the sum of their parts. He'd never experienced anything like it before and wondered if she could sense it too.

"Thanks for that," Luke said, "I'm Luke—,"

"—Skywalker, yes I know," the woman said, "I came here looking for you." She held out her hand. "My name is Mara Jade."

Luke took her hand and warmly shook it.

"A pleasure to meet you," he said. As they started toward Luke's speeder, he continued, "So, why were you looking for me?"

"This is going to take some time to explain," Mara said.

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"So who _were_ those women attacking you, anyway, Luke," Han finally asked.

"The Pike Sisters," Luke said, "twin martial artists skilled in Teras Kas, a martial art that was apparently created for the main purpose of fighting Jedi and other Force-users as it's disciplines make the user very difficult to read with the Force—a task made even harder where the Pike Sisters were concerned because of their Epicanthix heritage." Epicanthix were a near-Human species, almost indistinguishable from normal Humans, who possessed a rare genetic immunity to Force-assisted mental tricks, influence, domination and mind reading.

"At first," said Leia, "all of us didn't know what to think about Mara and we barely had time to even get acquainted before Lando contacted us with news about Fett."

Lando said, "Chewie and I had hired Dash Rendar to help us track down Boba Fett. Dash tracked down the assassin droid IG-88 and found out that it had attempted to ambush Fett near Tatooine but that Fett had crippled his ship and withdrawn to the Zhar system for repairs."

"Zhar," said Luke, "has an Imperial Enclave guarded by a pair of ImpStar Dueces, so we called in the Rogues for a little backup."

**Then...Five Months Ago, Zhar system**

Two heavily modified freighters—a Suwantek TL-1800 and a CEC YT-1300—dropped out of hyperspace in the Zhar system, named after a gas giant in the system by the same name. The planet Zhar had a dozen moons, only two of which were habitable—Gall, which had the Imperial Enclave, and Kile which was on the far size of Zhar from Gall.

Luke would have preferred everyone traveling in the Falcon, but the Suwantek had one major advantage over the Falcon—it already possessed a docking cradle for Starfighters, meaning that one wouldn't have to be jury-rigged up to hold his X-Wing. Now Luke noticed on the Suwantek's sensors a dozen more X-Wings approaching their position and the comm. crackled to life.

"Is that you Luke? Where'd you pick up that trash heap?"

Mara's eyes flashed and Luke quickly spoke into the comm. "Hello Wedge. This ship belongs to a…new friend of mine, let's say. And while this ship may not look like much, appearances can be deceiving."

"Sure, whatever," said Wedge

"So, how are things going?"

"Oh, you know," Wedge said, "Another day, another credit—before taxes of course. I hope you've got something interesting cooked up, things have been rather slow lately."

Luke undocked his X-Wing for the final approach and landing. The ships headed to and landed at the secret base Rogue Squadron's techs had established on Kile. The base wasn't much, just some hastily assembled prefab buildings with basic amenities. They found Dash Rendar lying in a chair, apparently sleeping but he leapt to his feet when they approached.

"Princess," Dash said with a sweeping theatrical bow," Welcome to our humble castle."

Leia rolled her eyes, "Turn off the charm, Rendar," she said, "My cousin Javul told me _all_ about you."

"Only good things I hope," Dash said with a roguish smirk, "how is she, by the way?"

"Last I heard she was fine," Leia replied.

Lando was looking back and forth between them and finally raised an eyebrow at Leia, "Cousin _Javul_? I thought your family died on Alderaan?"

"My _adopted_ family died on Alderaan," Leia corrected him, "Well, except for Winter of course, but she was adopted too. Javul Charn is—,"

"—Javul _Charn_?" Lando exclaimed, eyes widening. Luke and Mara also stared at Leia, surprised. "The _HoloNet_ star? _She's_ your _cousin_?"

"Yes, she is," said Leia.

"I met Luke on Hoth," said Dash and turned to Mara with another bow, "But I don't think I've ever seen you before, fair lady."

Now it was Mara's turn to roll her eyes; she crossed her arms.

Lando made the introductions, "Dash, this is Mara Jade; Mara, is this is Dash Rendar—thief, card cheat, smuggler, and an okay pilot."

Dash's grin increased, "What do you mean, 'okay', Calrissian? I could fly rings around you in a one-winged hopper with a plugged jet."

"Modest too, I see," Mara said drolly.

Dash gave another bow, "I see the lady has a keen eye to go with her stunning beauty."

"Bottle the serpent oil, Dash," Lando said. "Let's take care of business."

"First good idea you've had in years, Lando," Dash said.

Wedge powered up a holoprojecter and began reviewing the recon data they and Rendar had collected, including maps of the moon's surface and the Enclave itself. They'd identified the docking bay where Fett's ship was landed. With two Impstar Dueces guarding the enclave, there were a total of one hundred and forty-four TIES, making the odds just slightly better than 12-to-1.

It was best, Luke decided, to keep things simple and so he presented his idea. The others looked at him as if he'd suddenly announced he could fly by flapping his arms.

"What?" Luke said

" _That's_ your plan, Skywalker?" Mara said, "Attack the Imperials head on at twelve-to-one odds as a diversion while loudmouth Rendar here leads the rest of us to Fett?"

"Okay, so it's simple—,"

"Simpleminded," said Mara. "Not to mention, crazy, suicidal, stupid—,"

Luke set his jaw and narrowed his eyes at her. "So, you have a better idea," Luke challenged her.

Mara started to say something, as the germ of an idea came to her, then hesitated as she realized it was an even stupider idea than Luke's; her Suwantek had a rack of false transponder codes, so it would be easy to use one to pose as free-traders—which wasn't such a bad idea by itself except for the fact that the Suwantek wasn't actually carrying any cargo, which would make it rather more difficult to pose as free-traders since they _never_ operated their ship empty, they simply couldn't afford to. Other potential covers that occurred to her either posed similar problems or would take too long set up. And time was clearly an issue here as they only knew that Fett was on Gall _at the moment_ and they didn't know his schedule; the longer they delayed to plan, the greater the risk that he would be gone before they could execute their plan.

"Well..." she began.

"That's what I thought," Luke said with a small note of triumph in his voice.

**Now… The** **_Millennium Falcon_ ** **, Hyperspace**

"At first," Lando said, "Things went as well as can be expected. In his ship the _Outrider_ , Dash guided us toward the starport while Luke and the Rogues kept the Imperials occupied. Of course, even though we were flying at tree-top level and trying to remain inconspicuous, Dash still couldn't resist showing off."

"Of course not," Han agreed, "because then he wouldn't be Dash."

"Unfortunately," said Leia, "Dash bailed on us right as we found _Slave I_ and we were unable to stop Fett from escaping. We barely managed to get out of there in one piece."

"Then there two more attempts to kill me," Luke said, "first when we were disengaging from the Imperials; Janson's astromech droid took control of his fighter and attempted to shoot me down."

"Why would it do that?" Han asked

"We were just as confused," said Luke, "But it turned out that the chief technician of the Rogues had been bribed to do so; she later attempted to shoot me but was killed. Tracking the money was...difficult."

**Then…Five Months Ago, Rebel base Kile, Zhar system**

"Well," Wedge said, "it seems there was a transfer for ten thousand credits into the chief's account a few days ago, just after Rogue Squadron arrived here. There was also second pending file of credit, most likely for the rest of the payment after the job was done."

"The money came from Buckley Investments," Lando said, "we checked the paperwork, it's a dummy corporation. We traced the money back through several more dummy corporations: Frontier Acquisitions, Celanon Finance, Delcas HoloVid and finally wound up with something called Saber Enterprises."

Mara frowned and said, "I'm not sure about the first two, but I know that those last three are fronts for Imperial Intelligence."

"So somebody in the Empire paid the chief to kill Luke," Leia said, "this has Vader's gloveprints all over it."

"No, it doesn't," Mara and Luke said simultaneously as they shook their heads, then glanced at each other. Luke gestured at Mara to go on, "first of all, those last three are specifically fronts for Renik, which is the _counter-intelligence_ branch of Imperial Intelligence's Bureau of Operations; although Renik does carry out covert operations, they are always against other spies and spy rings. But Luke isn't a spy, so any official operation to kill him would have gone through the _Assassination_ branch. And Assassination has its own shell corporations set up for this express purpose; there is literally no reason for them to use any of those belonging to Renik, let alone three of them in the same transaction. Furthermore, an official op would have done a _much_ better job of covering its tracks; no, this looks much more like someone else trying to point the finger at the Empire."

Leia, Lando and Wedge all stared at Mara for a moment.

"I can see your reasoning," Leia admitted, "but this would mean that some outside agency managed to penetrate the Empire's own counter-intelligence outfit. Just how likely is that?"

"It wouldn't require full penetration," said Mara, "it wouldn't even require an inside agent, just one greedy bureaucrat in the right place."

"Perhaps," Leia said with a sigh.

"It also makes sense that it wouldn't be the Empire," Luke said, "because Darth Vader wants to recruit me, which he can't do if I'm dead."

"So who are your other enemies?" Lando asked. "I'm sure after three years in the Rebellion, you've got quite a list."

Luke furrowed his brow in thought, "Well, let's see, there's the Tagge Family—Domina Tagge specifically—,"

Mara placed her hands on her hands, "Let me guess, _another_ old girlfriend who turned out to be a spy who wanted you dead or turned?"

Luke winced. "Not quite, but...close enough," he said.

"Do you have any old enemies besides Vader who _aren't_ your old girlfriends?" Lando asked.

"Blackhole," Luke said.

Now Mara blinked. " _Blackhole?_ When in the nine hells did you cross paths with _him_?"

Luke glanced at her curiously. "It wasn't in my dossier?"

"Not that I remember," Mara said, "but then it is a big file and I did skim parts of it, so I may have missed it."

"It's a long story," Luke replied, "But anyway, Blackhole doesn't hire assassins to do his dirty work."

"More than that," Mara added, "Blackhole is Ysanne Isard's _boss_ , nominally at least, so he wouldn't have made the mistake of using Renik instead of Assassination."

"That can't be it," said Leia.

"Of my old enemies? No," Luke admitted, "But my old enemies who have the resources to arrange something like this _and_ who are still alive? That's a _much_ shorter list." It did not, for example, include people like Luke's childhood friend Janek Sunber who was an officer in the Imperial army.

"What about Jabba the Hutt?" Lando asked, "I mean, even if he has no reason to dislike you personally, Luke, he would know that you're Han's friend and thus bound to try and rescue him at some point, or do something to interfere with Fett's delivery—such as, say, rounding up some of your Rebel buddies for an operation like what we just tried."

"It's possible," Luke said, "Jabba certainly has the credits to hire people like the Pike Sisters. At any rate, it's something to look into."

Leia stared off into the distance. She'd already lost Han, she wasn't about to lose Luke too. He was too important to her and to the Alliance. Leia knew that she loved Han but she also loved Luke; she was starting to realize that it wasn't the same way as Han, but she still didn't want to see him hurt. And she had a feeling, an intuition, that these attempts on Luke's life were just the tip of something much bigger and much deeper.

**Now… The** **_Millennium Falcon,_ ** **Hyperspace**

"And so," said Leia, "That was about when I got the bright idea to go ask Black Sun for information."

" _Black Sun_?" Han exclaimed, "Leia, you _don't_ want to get into bed with them; Black Sun is dangerous."

"Yes, we know," said Lando, "And I told her as much."

"Both Winter and Javul have told me all about their own run-ins with Black Sun," Leia said, "I knew the risks but neither the Bothans nor the Alliance had heard anything about the assassination attempts on Luke."

Lando said, "I took her and Chewie to Rodia, where I have a Black Sun contact at a casino."

"Oh, naturally," Han said dryly.

"The rest of us," said Luke, "returned to Tatooine where I spent a few days in seclusion meditating to complete my lightsaber."

**Then...Five Months Ago, Obi-Wan's house, Tatooine**

Luke emerged holding his new lightsaber and pressed the button. A green beam of light erupted from it. Luke held his hand close to it, felt no heat, nodded and then gave his new lightsaber a few experimental swings. It felt like an extension of his body, even better balanced for him than his old one.

"Farmboy," Mara greeted him as she emerged from the Suwantek, "You're finally done."

"How long was I in there?"

"Almost three days," said Mara.

In total, from to start to finish, it had taken Luke an entire month to finish the lightsaber. Obi-Wan's journal said that a Jedi Master could build one in just two days if he was in a hurry, but Luke knew that he still had a ways to go before he reached that level.

"So," Mara continued with a little smirk, "Feel up to a little sparring?"

Luke grinned, "You're on."

Mara ignited her own purple lightsaber; they switched the blades to low power so a hit would only sting and they took up stances. For a moment they locked gazes and circled around each other. Then Mara lifted her lightsaber and charged. Luke raised his blade and blocked her strike, then used the momentum to counter-attack; the blow would have smashed through her guard if she hadn't stepped back. Again they circled. Mara attacked again, this time with low cut towards Luke's chest. Luke turned the lightsaber to point down and blocked, then continued driving forward towards Mara, who again stepped back out of the way.

Again they circled. Mara cut to Luke's side. Luke half-extended his arm to again point his lightsaber at a downward angle and stopped her. This time the blades locked for a moment as did the gazes, in a struggle that was equal parts physical and psychological. Again Mara stepped back but this time only feigned retreat and instead immediately cut towards Luke's head. Luke halted his planned counter-attack midstroke and brought his lightsaber blade up almost horizontally and again their blades locked, this time with their faces mere inches part. Mara pulled back again, evading Luke's riposte, and they continued circling.

"You fight like Vader," Mara observed.

"I'm not sure how to take that," said Luke.

Mara launched herself into the air, flipping herself over Luke's head to strike at his back. But Luke pivoted on his heels and batted aside Mara's strike, using the momentum to try and distrup her grip on the lightsaber. But Mara managed to hold onto it and completed her flip, landing on her feet. "I mean," Mara continued, "that you're letting me press the attack, always counter-attacking but not pressing your own attack; he also does that alot."

Thinking about it for a moment, Luke realized that she had a point. In their initial confrontation on Cloud City, Vader had allowed him to press the attack and mostly only counter-attacked. It was only after Vader had been knocked off the carbon-freezing platform that he had become much more aggressive and forced Luke onto the defense.

Mara raised her lightsaber, about to launch another attack, when she suddenly hesitated. Luke was about to take advantage of that to press his own offensive when he sensed it too, something or someone was coming—something dangerous.

Acting purely on instinct Luke and Mara turned so that their backs were now to each other and switched their lightsabers back to normal. It started as a distant drone, faint but growing louder every second until it became an echoing racket and Luke finally recognized the source: swoops.

Swoops were similar to speeder bikes but that was like comparing a child's tricycle to a mountain bike; little more than engines with seats and controls, they were fast and maneuverable but difficult to control. Swoops were favored by many criminal gangs like the Nova Demons and the Dark Star Hellions; not everyone who rode them was an outlaw—Luke himself had spent a lot of time riding one as a teen—but there was no other explanation for why a more than a dozen swoops would be out here in the middle of nowhere.

The riders wore protective goggles, shock helmets and mismatched flight suits; fully half weren't even in flight suits, but the simple grey clothes usually worn by freight handlers. All had the same insignia on their jackets, which looked vaguely familiar to Luke but he couldn't quite place it, and they were all armed with blasters.

One of them raised his blaster and fired. Neither Luke nor Mara bothered even trying to block the bolt because it hit the sand in front of them, turning it into muddy glass. Another biker yelled above the racket, "Blow them to Bespin, boys!"

The swoopers roared in, snapping shots at them. Still filled with the Force, Luke and Mara whirled their lightsabers in a blur of motion, deflecting all of the shots. Two of the riders were close now, firing again; one missed and Luke redirected the other's shot back at the first one. The dead swooper fell off his bike and a slash from Luke's lightsaber damaged the swoop, sending it colliding with its neighbor, whose rider jumped free at the last second. One bike was smashed and useless, the other was damaged but not usable.

Mara swung her lightsaber in a feint and then slammed her boot into a rider, toppling the attacker from his swoop. She hopped onto the swoop, grabbed ahold of the handlebars and restarted the engine. She spun the swoop in a one-eighty, pointed it at a spiky alien wielding a giant axe, and opened wide the throttle. She was nearly unseated by the sudden acceleration but managed to stay in the seat. The axman's weapon shattered when it hit her lightsaber; Mara drove past him and used her lightsaber to sever the thruster control line of another nearby swoop, sending it spinning out of control and into the path of another swoop, and they smashed into each other and crashed.

The now weaponless spiky alien approached Luke but his attention was focused on turning back towards Mara; Luke took advantage of that and knocked the alien out of his own swoop, hopped onto it, pulled the ring to restart it and raced after Mara. This drew the attention of the leader, who used several hand-signals. The swoopers scattered and reformed.

Luke belted his lightsaber and donned a pair of spare goggles that had been clipped to the handlebar. He caught up with Mara and noted that she had done the same with her lightsaber and was also wearing goggles. Luke gave her a signal to follow his lead; she nodded and then Luke opened up the afterburners. A good swoop could reach speeds of 600 kph; they'd be at Beggar's Canyon in minutes.

'Let's see them catch me on my own turf,' Luke thought with a grin. He'd explored every nook and cranny of that canyon as a teen.

First up was a route called 'Main Avenue' which went mostly straight for about two kilometers and then made a sudden sharp right turn, Dead Man's Turn it was called as if you took it too fast you'd end up a splatter against the canyon wall. Luke slowed as he approached the turn, hit his retros and swerved hard right to make the turn. Mara's unfamiliarity with the canyon led to her taking the turn just a few seconds too late and she veered dangerously close to the canyon wall before correcting and straightening out. A rider behind them wasn't so lucky and crashed into the wall in a fireball.

The next turn was a long zigzag like a stretched out 'Z'; the trick was to stay in the center as the corridor narrowed in the middle. Seconds after emerging from the corridor Luke spotted a gray-suited swooper; he had to have been pretty good, or pretty stupid, to have gained on them this fast.

Up ahead was the Needle, a narrow slot lined with jagged rock teeth. Luke went through the slot and felt a shard of rock tear his jacket. Mara and most of the swoopers went around the Needle but one of them tried to follow Luke through it but didn't make it and instead hit the side in another fireball.

But there were still more swoops pursuing them and Luke was running out of tricks. He was throttling back for a sharp turn when he heard a voice yell hoarsely:

"He's got help! We ain't gonna win this one. Let's burn!"

'What?' Luke thought. He looked over and saw a swoop, engines off, dropping silently in free fall. The rider was wearing black, including a flight helmet with a polarized shield, and held a blaster which he was using to shoot at the scattering swoopers. For a moment Luke worried that the newcomer was going to crash but then the swoops engines ignited to slow its fall and it finally reached to within a handspan of the ground before stopping dead and hovering.

'Now that is flying,' Luke thought and brought his swoop into a hovering idle. Mara pulled to a stop next to him, breathing heavily. Then the stranger sidled up next to them and pulled off his helmet. Luke recognized him immediately.

"Dash?" Luke blinked, "What are _you_ doing here

Dash shrugged. "Right now, I'm saving you from swoop scum."

"But _why_?" Mara asked.

"The Princess hired me to keep an eye on you —,"

"She _what_?" Mara exclaimed.

"Hey, ease up—," said Dash

"No, you listen _pal_ ," Luke retorted, "We don't need a baby-sitter."

"Oh, really," Dash said, "so you could've taken all of those thugs all by yourselves."

"We weren't doing so bad."

"No, you weren't. But you still woulda lost."

Luke gritted his teeth, then sighed and conceded the point. "Thanks," he said in a mumble.

"What was that?"

"Don't push it." Dash grinned.

Luke was definitely going to have words with Leia when she came back; he cared for her like a sister, but what gave her the right to hire him bodyguard? And it _had_ to be a paying job because Dash didn't do anything for free.

"Did you catch their tattoos?" Dash was saying, "This is Jabba's gang." Luke took a second look at a downed swooper and suddenly recognized the insignia. "I was hanging 'round Mos Eisley when I overheard them talking about being ordered to kill you."

"We'd already figured that much out," said Mara, then shook her head, "But something about this doesn't feel right. The first two attempts—the Pike Sisters and then the bribed tech—were both professional quality hits; what kind of person follows that up with a gang of swoop thugs? Normally a crimelord like Jabba would send the amateurs out first and only shell out the credits for the professionals after they failed."

"So you think someone put Jabba up to this," said Dash and he let out a whistle, "There aren't many beings in the galaxy who could do something like that."

**Now...the** **_Millennium Falcon_ ** **, Hyperspace**

"After our dustup with Jabba's swoop gang," said Luke, "we got a message from Koth Melan, one of Leia's Bothan contacts, and left to meet him. He'd acquired—,"

"—from Black Sun it turned out—," Leia interjected.

"—information concerning a freighter called the _Suprosa_ , which was going to be carrying a classified Imperial computer."

**Then...Four and a half Months Ago, Koth Melan's safehouse, Tal'cara City, Kothlis**

While the Bothan techs worked frantically to decrypt the Imperial computer, Luke stood off to one side and fumed.

_'Some commander I am'_ , Luke thought darkly, ' _I keep getting people killed._ ' Biggs at Yavin, nine members of Rogue Group at Hoth, Dix Rivan at Gall, and now half a squadron of Y-wings. _'I should have known that it sounded too easy to be true. I should have been prepared for a trick.'_ Eight of those twelve deaths were because that loudmouth braggart Rendar had missed the missile that the _Suprosa_ had fired. The rookie Bothan pilots hadn't had a chance.

' _I was too confident, too cocky, too certain in my still limited control of the Force._ ' But the Force hadn't helped him in this battle, hadn't warned him that the freighter was a trap. The dark side, however, would always be there if you needed it... _'no, don't go there. Don't even think about going down that road..._ ' But having tasted its power on Cloud City, it was tempting—oh so _tempting...'no, no, stop it!'._

"Cut it out, Skywalker," Mara abruptly declared.

Luke blinked, and then looked at her, "What are you talking about?"

"You're leaking anger and guilt all over the place," said Mara, "And it's starting to affect me. Cut it out."

"Just like that?" Luke retorted, "I'm just supposed to flip a switch and suddenly stop feeling upset about the fact that I lost a dozen Bothans securing this damn computer."

"They were all volunteers, like you; they all knew the risks involved. You couldn't have known that the freighter would be so heavily armed that it was willing to pick a fight with a squadron of Y-Wings, an X-Wing and the _Outrider_. Most freighters, even most armed ones, _would_ have immediately surrendered in the face of that much firepower and the fact that this one didn't is not your fault. So stop blaming yourself for it."

"I was in command," Luke said, "that _makes_ it my responsibility."

"And there was nothing that you could have done better given what you knew," said Mara, "So, cut it out."

Luke clenched his fists, lowered his head, took a deep breath, and started to let it out slowly. He did it again, and again, and finally started to regain control of his emotions.

Koth Melan came walking over, looking grim. "The techs have found something," he said, "It's—,"

The door suddenly exploded inward and several men came in shooting.

Luke and Mara snatched their lightsaber from their belts, lit them, and began whipping them around to deflect the blaster fire. The air began stinking of ozone. Despite their best efforts, two of the techs took hits and went down while the others scrambled for cover. Koth Melan drew his own blaster and returned fire, hittng the lead attacker right between the eyes; the attacker fell backwards.

More came boiling through the shattered doorway. Luke and Mara leaped forward, brought their lightsabers around and took out the next two men through the door. Another blaster bolt from Melan took out a fourth attacker, but now Luke could see at least a dozen more shooters crowding their way forward.

Luke and Mara did their best but energy beams cooked the air, darting past them to scorch consoles and techs alike.

"Too many of them!" Melan yelled. "This way."

Luke and Mara wove a curtain of hard light with their lightsabers, deflecting blaster bolts and driving their attackers back temporarily, then they leaped to the side and Melan fired into the opening, briefly clearing it.

"Come on!"

Luke and Mara turned and ran. This was definitely a time when discretion was the better part of valor. Luke briefly wondered just who their attackers were. They wore black but had no insignia. Imperial commandos after the stolen computer? Mercenaries? He pushed it aside for later. It was clearly time to leave. Luke and Mara hurried after Melan. One of the Bothan techs had grabbed the computer and jerked it free of the cables attached to it.

"Go!" Melan yelled, "We'll cover you." The tech ran towards the back of the room, opening up a concealed and unmarked emergency exit in the wall, and hurried through. Melan's blaster went dry and he tossed it aside. "Run!"

Mara was already running towards the exit. But before Luke could take a step, a blaster bolt hit Melan and the Bothan went down. Unwilling to leave behind an injured comrade, Luke stood between Melan and the attackers; but the injured Bothan quickly expired and Luke suddenly found himself surrounded by fifteen men all pointing blasters at him but not shooting.

One of them, a Barabel, stepped forward and said, "Turn off your saber, you can't win."

Luke briefly weighed the odds and then shut off his lightsaber.

**Now...the** **_Millennium Falcon_ ** **, Hyperspace**

"So why were you captured?" Han wondered, "Who were those guys?"

"Bounty hunters," said Luke, "I had two bounties on my head, one for my live capture and the other for my death." He named a figure and Han whistled,

"That's enough to buy half a city and still have enough left over to retire comfortably. How'd you get away?"

Luke replied, "well, I had help from Mara and Lando."

"While Luke was getting captured," said Leia, "the rest of us met with Guri, an HRD droid who served as Xizor's representative; she convinced Chewie and myself to travel in disguise with her to meet Xizor."

"After they left," Lando said, "I took Threepio and _the Falcon_ and returned to Kothlis, only to find the system under Imperial blockade and so I landed at the shadowport on one of its moons."

"Once I realized that Luke had been captured," Mara continued, "I doubled back and tailed the bounty hunters to their safehouse."

**Then...Four and a half Months Ago, Tal'cara City, Kothlis**

Luke had found it relatively easy to mind-trick his way out of his cell and retrieve his weapons, but he'd quickly been discovered and now he was submerged deeper in the Force than he'd ever been before and moving faster than he'd ever thought possible, too fast even to think. His lightsaber wove a tapestry of green light, deflecting the hail of blaster bolts from the bounty hunters. Luke was moving with the flow of the Fore, cutting, blocking, and parrying his way through the bounty hunters, when ahead and to his left a wall suddenly shattered and imploded.

Smoking debris was sprayed and spattered in all directions, blowing down some of the bounty hunters and causing others to fall back. From the roiling smoke and acrid vapor emerged Mara Jade, weaving her lightsaber to deflect blaster bolts; she chopped through the barrel of the nearest bounty hunter's blaster, who dropped it and fled.

While the bounty hunters fell back in confusion, Luke and Mara turned and ran. After a brief pursuit through the streets, Luke and Mara finally managed to duck into an alleyway.

"So, Farmboy, I trust you've learned your lesson?"

" _My_ lesson?" Luke retorted, " _You_ _left me behind!"_

"Melan told us to run, so I ran; _you're_ the one who decided to be a noble idiot and stay behind for someone who was already dead."

Luke gritted his teeth but refrained from correcting her because it didn't matter, she was right. A tremor in the Force jerked their heads up toward the sky; Luke felt the coiled predator image of impending danger and something else, something cold, dark and familiar.

"Vader," Luke and Mara said in unison.

"Let's get to the starport," Mara said.

But they were still several blocks away when the feeling of imminent danger suddenly heightened. Then, flying overhead, came Imperial troop shuttles.

Luke and Mara came up short, watching as the shuttles moved in to land throughout the city. Then, from loudspeakers all over the city, came a loud whining alarm, followed by a deep voice saying:

"Attention! Attention! This city is now in a state of high alert. Rebel saboteurs have infiltrated the city and may be working to disable communications and other public utilities. Imperial troops are now conducting a search to locate and neutralize these individuals. Be prepared to present your identification, and report any suspicious activity or individuals immediately."

Distantly, Luke and Mara continued to hear the sounds of sirens and marching feet, though they couldn't see any stormtroopers yet. All around them citizens looked around in confusion and concern, glancing furtively at them and then began hurrying to get off the streets. Within minutes, street traffic had dropped off considerably and those people still on the street kept their heads down as they walked hurriedly, casting sidelong glances in either direction. Through the Force, Luke and Mara could sense fear, anxiety and tension.

"Let's go," Mara said quietly. They resumed walking, mimicking the behavior of those around them in order to blend in. After fifteen minutes of walking they reached the first of five major street intersections on the way to the starport. At the intersection was a group of ten stormtroopers accompanied by an officer. Two of the stormtroopers were standing guard while the officer was checking identifications; the remaining stormtroopers were walking up and down the lines of people, looking for suspicious behavior.

"Damn," Mara swore softly, "We can't go through it unless you want to try a mind-trick."

"That many minds at once," Luke shook his head and sighed, "it's too risky. We'll have to find a way around."

Mara took in the area for a moment, then grabbed Luke's arm and led him down an alley. As the neared the far side, Luke pressed his back against the wall and turned his head just enough to see the street through his peripheral vision; he was aware of Mara pressing her body up close to his. They spotted another stormtrooper patrol approaching. Luke turned his head back to Mara—just in time for her to grab his head and kiss him.

At first Luke was stiff in shock and surprise, then he wrapped his hands around her and kissed her back; despite the circumstances, Luke couldn't resist savoring the warmth of her lips, the feel and shape of her body. Despite the circumstances, Luke had never enjoyed a kiss as much as this one. Finally they broke apart but for a moment they just stood there, staring into each other's eyes and breathing heavily, at a sudden loss for words.

"I—uh—that—uh—,"

"Uh—that—that was—,"

"—strictly tactical," Mara finally said a little too quickly, turning away to look back into the street. The patrol was gone.

"Uh—right," Luke said after a long moment. His body still tingled from the memory and he ached to feel her again. Luke shook himself and followed Mara through more alleyways. The indirect route they were forced to take was agonizingly slow but they managed to avoid four more checkpoints and dozens of patrols. But then their luck finally ran out.

The Tal'cara starport was a circular structure arranged in a 'reverse galactic roundel' with the spokes pointing outward, each containing 15 ship berths; the starport was situated on the west side of the city in an area kept neat and tastefully decorated with a wide plethora of galactic artforms. Even under normal circumstances it was well-patrolled, now it was crawling with stormtroopers, who had set up checkpoints in front of each of the entrances, each of which had a long line of people waiting to get in—tourists, businessmen, other travelers, servant droids pushing repulsor carts and starport personnel. The main terminal was a dome-shaped building in the middle of the starport. A commercial unirail connected with the main concourse and ran into the warehouse district. Passenger unirails ran throughout the city and one station was just outside the starport.

"We need a new plan," said Luke

"We need new identities," Mara corrected him, "Which is unfortunate because everything I'd normally use to do that is aboard the Suwantek. We'd have to break into a government building to forge new identies, which—,"

"—which would draw attention," Luke said, following her train of thought, "Which is the last thing we need at this point."

"Right," said Mara, "And even if we get to the Suwantek, it will be difficult getting clearance to—." A passing 3PO protocol droid, jostled by the crowd, stumbled into her.

"I'm terribly sorry," the droid said but then it added, rather loudly, "Oh! Oh, my! You're the saboteurs!"

All throughout the crowd, stormtroopers suddenly turned toward them and began advancing.

Hands clasped together, Luke and Mara turned away from the starport and started running back towards the alleys. The stormtroopers opened fire but missed, sending the crowd into a panic; the civilians began fleeing in every direction, which slowed down Luke and Mara's escape, but also their pursuers. In the confusion, they managed to slip past the stormtroopers before they managed to tighten the cordon. At first Luke wasn't sure if even Mara knew where they were going, but then—after walking a good distance around the perimeter of the starport, Mara finally pulled Luke to a stop near a service entrance that was now left unguarded.

While Luke stood watch, Mara retrieved a security tunneller from her utility belt and got to work; after a few tries, she finally opened the door.

Inside was a short tunnel that led to another door, which opened onto a ledge in a storeroom; below were two Stormtroopers and an Imperial officer guarding a door and several control panels with attached monitor screens.

Luke drew his lightsaber and ignited it; the green blade shimmered to life and, grasping the hilt in two hands, Luke leapt off the ledge toward the stormtroopers. He landed in front of one and slashed upward through the man's chest and arm, killing him and sending his weapon flying.

The other Stormtrooper turned toward Luke only to be knocked to the ground by a kick from Mara Jade as she descended and ignited her own purple lightsaber, which she then used to finish him off with a quick decapitation.

Luke glanced at Mara for a moment and then they turned toward the Imperial officer—just in time to see him pull down a switch on the wall next to the door. The officer grinned slyly as a red alarm lights overhead turned on and claxons began to wail. It was the last thing he ever did.

Not wasting any more time, Luke and Mara went through the door, which opened into one of the passenger terminals in the starport, which contained ticket counters staffed by droids and several waiting room. Above the terminal was the concourse, a transparisteel walkway that circled the starport; built ten meters above the ground, it provided a fantastic view of arriving and departing ships and was dotted with benches.

Imperial Stormtroopers came rushing through all the entrances. Luke and Mara reactivated their lightsabers and, deflecting the hail of blasterfire, advanced into their enemies. Knowing that they could not stand and fight, they began cutting a path toward the berth where Mara's Suwantek was docked. Once through the initial cordon of troops, Luke and Mara broke into a jog, continuing to deflect blaster fire from pursuing stormtrooopers. The running fight took them all the way to the berth.

Once onboard, Mara took the astrogation/comm. seat while Luke took the pilot seat and began the pre-flight warm-up sequence. Mara sent a quick message to Artoo, who was in Luke's X-Wing in the next berth over. Artoo quickly powered up the X-Wing and took off; flying over to the Suwantek's berth, Artoo fired the X-Wing's lasers at a group of Stormtroopers that had just arrived; weapons intended to fight other starfighters vaporized ground troops and the explosions left behind craters with blackened rims.

"Where'd your droid learn how to shoot like that?" Mara asked.

"Artoo's never had a memory wipe," Luke replied, "And he's got a counterpart bond with my X-Wing."

"Nice," said Mara. "How are we coming on the pre-flight."

"Almost—," the last light flicked green, "we're good to go." Before Mara could reply, Luke lifted off the ship on its repulsors but then put in hover. Mara used the Suwantek's tractor to reel in the X-Wing, locking it in the jury-rigged hull clamps. As Artoo transferred over, Mara moved to the sensor/shield station and said,

"Luke, sensors show that there's an entire fleet in orbit, including the _Executor_ ; this'll be difficult but its not like we have much of a choice at this point." Artoo rolled into the cockpit and plugged into a scomplink, taking over the piloting and astrogation. "To the gunwells," Mara continued, "this is going to be tight."

The Suwantek emerged from Kothlis' atmosphere and into a hail of turbolaser fire from the orbiting Star Destroyers. Swarms of Imperial TIE Fighters and Interceptors raced in closer.

Seated in the starboard gunwell, Luke fired again and again, destroying TIE after TIE after TIE, but there was no end to them in sight. Every system on the Suwantek was state of the art courtesy of the Imperial Security Bureau, including the shields, but all things had their limits.

Alarms blared warning of imminent shield failure and Luke instincts began screaming to get out, get out, get out _now!_

Luke jumped up from the seat and ran out of the gunwell, "Artoo set the autopilot and get to an escape pod." Artoo beeped a response and then Luke hurried over to the port gunwell, where Mara was still frantically firing the guns. He grabbed her and jerked her out of the seat.

"Luke, what are you doing?" Mara exclaimed

"It is time to leave."

"No," Mara said, trying to break free of his grip, "We're past the Star Destroyers, we can still make it."

Luke grabbed her face and stared into her eyes. "Now who's being the noble idiot?" Mara glared back at him for a moment, then looked down, let out a sigh and nodded. They ran over to one of the Suwantek's escape pods where Artoo was already waiting for them.

The hatch closed and the escape pod launched. Out of the window in the rear of the pod they watched as the Suwantek finally exploded.

Using the pod's thrusters, Luke steered them toward the shadowport on one of Kothlis' moons.

**Now...the** **_Millennium Falcon_ ** **, Hyperspace**

"After landing," Luke continued, "we met up with Lando and escaped in the _Falcon_ , though not," Luke glanced at Lando, "without having to hide in the asteroid belt for a while thanks to some engine trouble."

"And while they were off having all that fun," Leia said dryly, "I was meeting with Xizor and trying to resist his attempts at seduction."

"Yeah, those Falleen pheromones can be nasty," Han said, "almost derailed that scam on Wukkar that Winter told you about."

"Fortunately," said Leia, "I have a lot of experience coping with chemical influences from my time in the Imperial court and I was given special training to resist interrogations; so, I was able to resist his advances, and gave him a pretty good kick in the groin while I was at it."

Everyone chuckled.

Lando continued, "We hadn't been more than a few days on Tatooine when we got a message from Chewie that he'd escaped Xizor's Palace and that Leia was being held prisoner there by Xizor himself. So we snuck onto Coruscant using the sensor-shadow gambit."

It was a common smuggler trick; in theory, and according to the law, all spaceships were required to have at least one organic crewman. In practice, however, this law was often ignored and seldom enforced. Coruscant and many other heavily populated worlds were serviced by huge bulk freighters with all droid crews, which cut down significantly on costs but also made it possible for even a half-competent pilot to fly a ship of light freighter size and smaller close enough to the bulk freighter to avoid detection by Imperial picket and customs ships, as well as ground defense stations.

"After meeting up with Dash," said Lando, "We then snuck into Xizor's Palace through the sewers."

"The _sewers_?" Han said, "that's crazy. And stupid."

"Exactly what I said," Mara replied.

"And that's the problem with our opposition," said Lando "they keep thinking that nobody could possibly be as stupid as we are. Fools 'em every time."

"And really," Luke said, "aside from the stench, it wasn't so bad… except for the dianoga."

**Then...Four Months Ago, Xizor's Palace, Coruscant**

"Uh-oh," Luke whispered as he peered through the half-fogged coverplate. They were standing ankle deep in sewage inside a recycler that was continually pumping out more, trickling down to an open drain.

"What?" Lando also whispered

"There are six guards," said Luke. Four of them were sitting at a table a few meters away from the hatch, playing sabacc; the other two were standing near them, watching and apparently offering advice; only the two watchers held weapons, the other four had their blaster rifles stacked against the wall.

"Six? To guard a sewage plant?" Lando said.

"So what?" Dash added in a whisper as well, "There's five of us; we each kill one and whoever fires fastest gets the last one; we hit 'em fast enough, they won't even have the time to call for help."

Luke frowned. "That's six more bodies than necessary; if we move fast, we should be able to disarm them, tie them up and be on our way with no one the wiser."

Now Mara frowned and shot Luke a questioning glance.

"Whoa, wait a minute," said Dash, "What?."

"Since when did you become squeamish, Farmboy?"

"I'm not squeamish, I'm a Jedi," Luke corrected her, "Jedi only kill when it's absolutely necessary."

"So do I, but it's going to be necessary here," said Mara, "those guys work for a crimelord, they're going to have orders to shoot intruders on sight and they're not going to ignore them just because the intruders happen to include a guy with a lightsaber."

Luke gritted his teeth; he couldn't refute her argument and that was the problem. On the surface of it, it was completely logical and reasonable, but there was a very thin line between killing someone because you have no choice and killing someone just because they're in your way. A Jedi had to be prepared to take action but was also supposed to avoid violence whenever possible. Looked at with cold logic, Luke had to concede that it was unlikely in the extreme that Xizor's guards would actually surrender if given a chance; but it just didn't feel right to attack them without giving them that chance. But, seeing the others all disagreeing with him, Luke realized that he didn't have much choice anyway.

"Fine," Luke said, "But I'll still go in first, in case one of the guards is some kind of quick-draw specialist; then Mara, then Dash, then Lando and finally Chewie."

After a three-count, Dash threw open the hatch and Luke leapt out, bringing his lightsaber up to a ready stance.

The guards may have been bored but they were not slow; on hearing the hatch open, the two armed guards immediately spun around with their blaster rifles and opened fire. At the same time the other four guards threw themselves out of their chairs and then went for their own weapons.

Through the Force, Luke deflected the initial shots.

Mara leapt in but holding her blaster instead of her lightsaber; she fired quickly twice and the two standing guards went down.

Dash leapt in and fired once, twice, three times; two more guards fell just as they were reaching their weapons.

Lando leapt in and shot the fifth guard.

Chewie leapt in but the Wookiee's wet feet slid on the floor and he fell flat on his back.

The last guard wasn't holding a weapon but was yelling...yelling into a comlink. Mara shot him and he dropped. The comlink fell from his hand and skidded over to Luke's boot.

From the comlink came a small tinny voice: "Thix? What is going on down there? Thix? Come in, sector one-one-three-eight, come in—"

Chewie came to his feet and shrugged, looking embarrassed.

Luke shook his head and stomped down on the squawking comlink with his boot heel, smashing it.

"So much for sneaking in quietly," Lando said.

They took off running, following the floor plans they'd memorized, with Chewie in the lead. Now that the facility was alerted, time was of the essence. They rounded a corner and nearly ran into six more guards. Everyone with a blaster opened fire.

From Luke's comlink suddenly came Threepio's voice, sounding strident and even more nervous than usual.

"Master Luke, Master Luke!"

"We're little a busy here, Threepio," Luke yelled, leaving the comlink on his belt as he was preoccupied deflecting blaster bolts.

"But Master Luke, there are men coming toward the ship! Men with guns!"

Great. As if things weren't bad enough.

Luke deflected another bolt and leapt forward to bring his lightsaber down, severing the hand of the man who'd shot at him; Luke spun and kicked, knocking the guard flat. The other guards were all down as well. As they resumed running, Luke pulled out his comlink.

"Threepio?"

"Oh, dear, oh, dear!"

"Threepio!"

"Master Luke. Oh, what shall we do?"

"Take the ship out of there, now! Artoo knows the systems; you can operate the controls. Stay below the stratospheric security scanners, you got that?"

"Yes, Master Luke!"

"Go!"

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

Han gaped at his friends, "You let the droids fly my ship?"

"We didn't have a choice," said Luke.

"I don't _care_ ,' Han retorted, " _You let the droids_ _fly my ship!_ You're damn lucky that she's still in one piece because if she wasn't, friends or no, I'd peel all your hides!"

There was a long and uncomfortable pause.

"So, anyway," Leia continued, "Luke had contacted me through the Force to tell me that they were coming; when I sensed him close, I put my bounty hunter armor back on, broke out of my room and hurried to meet up with them. Not long afterward, we ran into Xizor."

**Then...Four Months Ago, Xizor's Palace, Coruscant**

Luke brought his lightsaber up in time to deflect Xizor's blaster bolts. The others raised their blasters just in time to see Guri hurl a chair at them; Chewie blasted it and then Leia took a shot but missed. Xizor and Guri hurried into a nearby room and seconds later a dozen guards arrived from around a corner and opened fire. Dash pointed out another nearby door; Chewie smashed through it. Leia followed him, then Dash, Lando and Mara. Luke went last, frantically deflecting a hail of blaster bolts.

The room looked like an office of some sorts.

Mara holstered her blaster, drew and ignited her lightsaber.

"Now what?" Leia said as blaster bolts continued to fly past the destroyed doorway.

"Well," said Lando, "I think it's time for some desperate measures." Lando reached into his backpack and withdrew a round silvery ball about the size of a man's fist, "A Class-A thermal detonator," he said, "I've got three." Leia took the device and examined it as Lando explained how to use it. Then placed it inside the bounty-hunter's helmet hooked to her belt. The others all looked at her.

"Uh, Leia..." Luke said.

"You said you had more of them, right?" Leia replied, "I want to hang on to this one. It might come in handy."

Luke shrugged. "Fine. It was your money that bought it anyway."

Outside the office, the blaster fire finally halted.

"Looks like its time for a chat with Xizor," said Luke, taking another thermal detonator from Lando and activating the deadman switch. The detonator began beeping and tiny lights began flashing.

Luke stepped out into the hall and held up the detonator.

Xizor obviously recognized it for his eyes suddenly widened and he yelled, "Don't shoot! Lower your weapons."

The guards looked confused but obeyed.

"Good idea," Luke said. The others moved out into the hall behind him. The beeping was suddenly very loud in the ensuing silence. "You know what this is?"

"A bomb on a deadman's switch," Xizor said. "What do you want?"

"To leave with my friends."

"If you release that bomb, you'll all die."

Luke shrugged "We're dead anyway, so we've got nothing to lose. How about you? Are you ready to all of this up?" He waved at the building around them. "This is a Class-A thermal detonator; the entire building will collapse if this thing goes off."

"You're bluffing."

"Do you want to find out?"

Xizor was silent for a long moment; then finally said, "Fine. Leave. No one will stop you."

The others came out and began edging past the guards, who fell over themselves making room as if that would make a difference. Luke stepped backwards with them, keeping an eye on Xizor. But then they stopped and Lando reached into his pack and produced another thermal detonator.

"What are you doing?" Xizor asked.

Lando just grinned and opened a garbage chute next to him, which led to the recycling bins down in the buildings sub-subbasement where they'd entered.

"No!" Xizor yelled.

Lando activated the detonator, which started beeping, and tossed it in

""You've got five minutes," said Lando, "I suggest you get moving."

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"So," said Lando,"Xizor's guards all panicked; he fled to his ship on the roof while we went to a landing pad on the fiftieth level."

"Guri caught up with us on the way there," said Luke "where she told me that she'd always wanted to test her skills against a Jedi."

"And let me guess" Han said, "despite the ticking bomb, you indulged her anyway."

"You know me too well," said Luke with a sigh. Mara snorted and let a humph.

**Then…Four Months Ago, Xizor's Palace, Coruscant**

Leia and the others paused at the door and glanced back down the corridor at Luke, who'd paused to check something out. Luke was facing Guri with his lightsaber and Leia wondered what he was waiting for. Was taken aback when Luke shut off his lightsaber. What was he doing? This whole building was going to blow up in three minutes.

Guri leapt at Luke with incredible speed but Luke nonetheless dodged.

"That kriffing idiot," Mara snarled, "if we survive this, I swear—,"

"Luke!" Leia called out to him as Guri circled. Leia immediately regretted it when Luke glanced back at her and gave Guri an opening.

Guri stepped forward and punched Luke in the belly, then followed up with an elbow that Luke dodged; he rolled away, turned and came up again. Guri hit him again near his ear and Luke went down. Guri raised her arm in a killing blow and brought it down but Luke suddenly moved impossibly fast, rolling aside, standing, and pivoting, shoving aside the descending chop and then using his left leg in a sweep that brought Guri down to the floor.

Luke pulled out his lightsaber again and ignited it, but he still didn't use it to kill her. For a few seconds he just stood there, what was he doing now?

"Luke! Come on!"

Finally Luke shut off the lightsaber again, said something to the downed Guri, then turned and jogged towards them.

They made it outside to the landing pad; when there was no sign of the ship, Mara rounded on Luke:

"What the kriff was _that_?"

"What were you thinking?" Leia demanded

"You give him too much credit," Mara retorted, "he _wasn't_." She was now inches away from his face. "You _ever_ pull a stupid stunt like that again and I _will_ shoot you."

Luke opened his mouth to reply but before he could say anything, Dash yelled out:

"Mother of Madness!" They looked at him and then at where Dash was _Millennium Falcon_ was coming in, but it was much too fast and spinning and corkscrewing like a demented gyroscope; finally, it straightened out but was still moving too fast.

"Duck!" Lando yelled; the six of them dropped flat to the ground. The ship almost hit them and pulled up only a meter from the pad's deck; it veered off to starboard and the port edge hit and shattered a nearby sensor array, spraying pieces in every direction. "Threepio, I'm gonna kill you!"

Luke got out his comlink. "Threepio, use the repulsors to bring it in! And hurry!"

"I'm trying, Master Luke. The controls are somewhat sensitive."

The ship suddenly surged upward a hundred meters, accompanied by a loud whistle from Artoo. The Falcon then lurched, canted sideways, and fell. Managed to right itself just before it would have plowed into a roof. Finally it lost speed and floated in placed fifty meters above them, then began drifting downwards toward them.

They backed up; the ship was now hovering over the landing pad two meters up when it suddenly dropped like a stone; the landing struts groaned from the strain but held and then the ramp lowered.

Chewie picked up Leia and ran, with Dash and Lando right on his heels and Mara not far behind. Luke made it inside just as the ramp was closing and followed the others to the cockpit.

"Move!" Dash yelled at Threepio and shoved the protesting droid out of the pilot seat, dancing his hands over the controls before he was even fully sitting down. Threepio fell into a heap against the copilot's seat. Artoo whistled frantically.

"You don't need to be so rude, Master Dash—"

A deep rumble echoed from beneath them and the Falcon shook.

"That's it, time's up!" Lando declared.

"We're going, we're going," said Dash. With a sudden lurch, the _Millennium Falcon_ lifted and roared away.

As it did, they saw Xizor's Palace shake. The landing pad collapsed and began dropping straight down. Smoke erupted with a horrific screech, followed by blasts of fire and sparks from giant electrical conduits. The ship rocked under the impacts of shrapnel as below them Xizor's Palace collapsed into a smoking, flaming ruin.

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"Dash called up his droid and transferred over to the Outrider," said Luke, "We made orbit easily enough but then, well—,"

"That," said Mara, "was when things got a little hairy."

**Then…Four Months Ago, Coruscant**

The _Millennium Falcon_ and the _Outrider_ raced up and out towards open space.

"Thanks for the ride," Dash said over the comm.

"Want to race to the jump spot?" Luke said at the controls. Lando was in the co-pilot seat; Chewie, and Leia were in the seats behind them, Mara was standing in the doorway.

Dash laughed and said, "You want a parsec head start?"

"No, I—"

A green turbolaser beam flashed between the ships, startling both pilots.

"We've got company," said Dash as more bolts blinked at them, none close enough to hit. Luke punched it and the Falcon raced for the jump spot. The Outrider kept pace.

Lando glanced at the sensors, "Unmarked corvette at two-seventy; four fighters at three-five-nine; they're not Imperials."

"Bet you a credit that they're Xizor's," said Mara.

"Makes sense," Luke said, "Get on the guns." Leia stood and she and Mara disappeared from the cockpit. "Good luck, Dash!"

"You, too, Luke."

The two light freighters ran for open space but Corusant was Core World, with a huge amount of civilian traffic going in and out, along with wheelworlds, skyhooks, space stations, solar mirrors, satellites, defense platforms and who knew what else.

The _Falcon_ rocked as turbolaser blasts splashed against the shields. Luke flew hard, bobbing, twisting this way, jinking that way, power diving, climbing, and weaving into and through all the other traffic and orbital clutter. But no matter which direction Luke turned, more and more unmarked ships kept coming in and, unlike the Leia and Mara, Xizor's pilots didn't care who they hit; several of them missed shots and lit up a passenger liner, wrecking its engines and forcing Luke into a radical turn to avoid a collision. The other civilian ships tried to scatter, but this only added to the chaos and made Luke's evasive maneuvers even more difficult.

"How the hell are we supposed to hit something with all this swerving?" Mara demanded over the comm.

"We're surrounded," Luke fired back at her, "How can you miss?"

A dark fighter zipped ahead of them and was blasted by the _Outrider_ 's cannons.

"See," Lando said, "that's how you do it."

"Shut it Calrissian," Mara snapped.

"I can't shake them," said Luke, "We're boxed in." Their attackers had formed a sphere in space around them and it was all Luke could do to avoid hitting anyone. And it was only a matter of time before the Imperial navy woke up and further added to the confusion; it was strange that they already hadn't.

Things were starting to look bad. Really, really bad...

A charging fighter, firing furiously, suddenly exploded right in front of them. The _Falcon_ drove right through the debris, which smashed against the shields.

"Good shot, who was that?"

"Not me," said Leia.

"Nor me," Mara added.

"Then who was it?"

From the comm came a familiar voice: "Hey Luke, mind if we join the party?"

"Wedge!" Luke blinked "What are you doing here?"

"Waiting for you. Dash's droid sent us a distress signal. Sorry it took so long to get here." Another of the Xizor's fighters exploded."

"Better late than never," said Luke with a grin. The odds were now not so bad. He swung the _Falcon_ into a wide turn and then into a belly-twisting power dive at a nearly ninety-degree angle. Three of Xizor's fighters stayed with them, firing all the way. But it soon became clear that even with the Rogues, they were still outnumbered more than fifteen to one, not counting the frigates and corvettes; they were losing this fight.

Leia blew up another attacker on the port side but two more came in. Luke punched the _Falcon_ into a steep turn.

"Okay, I think we've got a problem here," Dash said, sounding calm but resigned.

"He's right," said Wedge, "these guys aren't that good but they've got numbers and those frigates backing them up; we can't run, can't maneuver, and they don't have any scruples."

Luke took a deep breath, "Well, I guess we take as many with us as possible. Unless someone wants to surrender?" Wedge and Dash both laughed, "Yeah, that's what I thought; may the Force be with you."

Luke flew as he had never flown before, weaving, rolling, stalling, and diving. He threw them through power turns that nearly blacked them all out, but even with the Force as his ally, they were still losing. But just when things didn't seem like they could get any worse, they suddenly did.

"Luke," Lando said, "we've got TIE's incoming, a dozen and counting."

"I was wondering when they would show up," Luke said, "Listen everyone, thanks for everything, you've all been great friends. Mara, I just want to say that—"

"Shut up," said Mara, "Whatever it is, I don't want to hear it now."

Luke looked at the incoming TIE Fighters. He took a deep breath as the TIE's flashed past—and took out two of Xizor's fighters.

"Huh?" said Lando

"Luke," Leia said, "I just saw—,"

"We all saw it, what's going on?"

"Look out!"

"I see it!"

Luke put the _Falcon_ into a steep climb and then veered off to starboard. The space around them was a hailstorm of energy bolts and debris. But the TIEs were all concentrating on Xizor's ships, completely ignoring the _Falcon_ and only occasionally shooting at the X-Wings. Luke was about to ask why when he felt a familiar cold presence in the Force.

_'Vader'_

"What's Vader got to do with anything?" Lando asked. For a moment Luke thought he'd said it aloud but then realized that Mara had actually said it.

"I can sense Vader's presence," Mara said, "And trust me, he _definitely_ doesn't like Xizor. It's one of the few things he and I ever agreed on."

"So how does that help us?"

"You said it yourself," Mara said, "Vader wants to capture you alive; that can't happen if Xizor kills you."

Lando said, "Well thank our lucky stars for small favors. Look out!"

Luke zagged and just barely missed the incoming ship. He could see above them a giant Super Star Destroyer approaching a skyhook that was directly in front of them. Suddenly the Star Destroyer opened fire and the skyhook exploded with the brilliance of a nova for an instant.

"Oh, man," Lando said softly. "Someone must have made somebody really mad."

"That's our escape hatch," Dash said, "Follow me."

"He's crazy," Lando said.

Luke was inclined to agree but nonethless took the _Falcon_ in after the _Outrider_ ; it would be tricky and dangerous, but Dash was right, it was their only opening.

"Yeeeehaww!" one of the Rogues yelled.

Luke laughed. He knew just how they felt. They headed for the debris and it seemed as if they were going to get through hit.

"Look out, Dash!" Lando suddenly exclaimed.

Luke spared a glance just in time to see a piece of debris the size of a skyscraper right in the _Outrider_ 's path, too close to avoid.

"Dash!"

There was a sudden burst of light, too bright to look at; Luke turned away and Lando threw up an arm to block the glare. When the light faded, the _Outrider_ was gone.

"Oh, man," Lando said. "He's gone."

Triumph turned bittersweet in Luke's mouth but he shoved aside; there wasn't time for that now. He fell into the Force and flew.

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"I think my eyes are getting better," Han said, blinking rapidly, "Whoa!"

Luke was wearing all black with a lightsaber at one hip and a blaster at the other. Leia was his total contrast, wearing a simple white jumpsuit and a tan utility belt with an off-white shawl, her hair was in a bun on the back of her head; she also had a silver armband, tan-colored boots with light shin armor, and a utility belt with a lightsaber at one hip and a blaster on the other.

Mara Jade had green eyes and red-gold hair that fell to just below her shoulders. She wore a dark combat suit with high black leather boots with knee guards, a brown shoulder harness with a silver buckle on her back, a tan cowl around her neck, a brown leather belt, a tan cloak and tan gloves. A compact blaster was holstered against her right hip, her lightsaber rode her left.

"What?" Leia asked.

"Well, for one thing I wasn't expecting to see _you_ with a lightsaber," Han said, "I'm also struck by how much Mara physically resembles Shira in addition to your similar pasts."

"Believe me, I know," Mara said tightly, "It's been said before."

**Then… Four and a half months ago, the Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace,**

"So," Luke said, drawing out the word, "I think we should talk."

Mara looked up at him, "About what?"

"You know about what," Luke said.

"As I said at the time—,"

"—do you really expect me to believe that?"

Mara stood and crossed her arms, glaring at him, "You believe what you want, Farmboy." And with that she stood and left the room.

Luke let out a frustrated sigh and rubbed his eyes.

"Do I even want to know what that was about?" Lando asked

"No, you don't," Luke said.

**Then…Four Months Ago, a secret Rebel Alliance base**

At a large transparisteel window looking out from the surface of the asteroid into the blackness of space, Mara Jade stood with Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, Lando Calrissian, Chewbacca, Threepio and Artoo.

Luke was contemplating the recent dustup with Xizor and the death of Dash Rendar during their escape. Moreover, the Bothans had just come through with information that not only revealed that missile that had killed half a squadron of Bothans at Kothlis—the missile that hotshot braggart Dash Rendar had supposedly missed—had been one of the Empire's new diamond-boron missiles and thus impervious to blaster fire.

Worse still was that Luke had actually felt a bit glad—not for the deaths, but at seeing Dash taken down a notch; even worse was that Luke knew that he of all people should have been the one to sympathize most with Dash for up until very recently, Luke too had believed he'd caused the death of a comrade. And not just a comrade, but a woman he'd been attracted to and who had given every indication of reciprocating. It hadn't been love, but it could have—might have—turned into that if Luke hadn't unknowingly shot her down. A woman named Shira Brie. But the Bothans had also just discovered confirmation that Shira had been an Imperial agent, in the form of her own official dossier which described in terse and simple terms her mission to subvert his loyalties as what spies called a 'honey-trap.

Luke turned back to Lando, "How do feel about getting a job as a security guard?"

Lando pursed his lips for a moment and then nodded, "It's a good start, but I can't just walk into Jabba's Palace in a disguise and Jabba doesn't hire just anyone as a guard. Setting up a cover and infiltrating an organization takes time, months at least. What are you going to do in the meantime?"

_Months?_ If it was going to take that long…

"I have an idea," Luke finally said.

**Then… Four Months ago, the Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"Look," Mara said to Luke as they sat around the game table, "just because I defected and want to bring down Palpatine, that doesn't mean that I want to become a Jedi. Do you even know what being a Jedi entails?"

"It means committing oneself to a higher cause," said Luke, "a cause of service to the galaxy, to life itself, and to the Force. And only a Jedi can truly conquer Vader and the Emperor. And you could be a Jedi, Mara; a powerful Jedi."

"Right," Mara said. "And all I'd have to do is declare that I'm ready to serve the galaxy and possibly lay down my life for it. Sorry, I can't do that."

Luke frowned, and she caught the flicker of puzzlement from him.

"What is it about that that scares you?" he asked. "You served and worked for Palpatine all your life—,"

"And that is what terrifies me," Mara said, "I was loyal to an evil man and willingly blinded myself to all of his wickedness." Mara squeezed her hand into a fist. "I can't just offer that kind of loyalty again," she said and grimaced. "And that's something I don't understand," Mara said "how I was able to serve someone as evil as the Emperor without falling to the dark side?"

"I have a theory," Luke said

"I'm listening."

"The dark side is inherently selfish," said Luke, "It is the elevation of one's self and one's own desires above all else."

Mara nodded. "And?"

"Well, my point is that all that time you were serving the Emperor, you weren't doing so for selfish reasons," Luke said, "You were serving someone else, even if that other person was Palpatine and his selfish ends. And service to others is the essence of being a Jedi."

Mara thought about that and then shook her head. "No," she said, "I don't like that. Serving evil is evil. Doing something wrong for good motives is still wrong."

"I agree," Luke said. "But that's not what I said. Certainly, you did some wrong things in the service to the Emperor, but they weren't done for your own purposes, and so they didn't open you up to the dark side."

Mara glowered at the table. "I see the difference," she said. "But I still don't like it. The thing that keeps bothering me is why the Emperor even cared about trying to deceive me; I mean, he said it was because it 'made me more useful', but I don't get why didn't he just train me in the dark side like Vader and the other adepts."

"Because the dark side is inherently selfish," Luke said, "if you'd been trained in the dark side, you would have eventually had to face the contradiction of being selfish while serving someone else; even the Sith can barely that make work and you wouldn't have been a Sith. So, because the Emperor needed a servant who would serve him selflessly, he trained you to be…something else, something in between a Jedi and a Sith."

"So it was a matter of keeping me under control?"

"Partly," Luke said, "Look at the Star Destroyers of the Imperial Navy. They've all got nasty names like Executor or Devastator, and yet from what people like Tycho Celchu have told me, many in the Imperial navy are honorable people. Yet the vast majority of them continue to serve the Emperor and commit evil deeds in his name, just like you once did."

"And?"

"Think of it this way: Put someone in a situation where he or she is obligated to take actions they find personally abhorrent; fill their ears with words that their actions are honorable but surround them with constant reminders of their wrongness. The victim will cling to the words but also be aware—at some level—of the wrongness. He or she can't escape it, no matter what they do, because they are surrounded by symbols that won't let them forget. They're aware of their descent slowly towards the dark side but they can't stop it. Someone like the Emperor would find this knowing acceptance of corruption, a half-accepting, half-struggling process of being corrupted, quite amusing."

Mara was silent for a long moment. "You may be onto something," she finally said, "in fact, that sounds a lot like how I used to be: always aware of the corruption within the Empire but clinging to the words that the Emperor at least was honorable and that the wrong was just a few bad apples instead of symptoms of a much bigger problem. I think even the Emperor occasionally sparing lives when I asked was not for their own sake, but to give me something to cling to, some reason to go on ignoring what I already knew in my heart." She clenched a fist and brought it down on the table. "Until I finally found something I couldn't ignore that opened my eyes, like Alderaan did to so many others."

There was a long moment of silence.

"So, I was some kind of 'grey' Force user with morals," Mara frowned, "some kind of experiment, perhaps, to see just how far a righteous person could be pushed into unwittingly serving evil."

"Something like that," said Luke.

"That's not very Jedi."

"If you had an opportunity to ensure the death of the Emperor at the cost of only your own life, would you do it?"

"Yes," Mara answered without hesitation.

"Then you are already halfway down the road to becoming a Jedi," said Luke. "You are already selflessly dedicated to a cause that will better the lives of countless people you've never even met, not just because you feel personally betrayed; that sense of betrayal was merely the catalyst."

Mara was silent for a long moment. "Perhaps," she finally conceded, "Let's see what your Jedi Master has to say."

From a distance, Leia watched Luke and Mara talk with mixed feelings. Mara Jade joining them had been an unexpected surprise and at first Leia hadn't been sure what to make of her or if she could be truly trusted, especially given her blunt admission that she'd been ordered to kill Luke. Luke's attraction to her had been obvious from the start and for a while Leia had been worried—especially given Mara's physical resemblance to Shira Brie, whom Leia had never liked. Something else was going on between them now; although Leia didn't know what, she'd noticed a new tension and awkwardness between them over the past month or so.

**Then…Three and a half Months Ago, Dagobah**

Princess Leia Organa—who had learned quite unexpectedly a few weeks ago that her birth name was 'Leia Amidala Skywalker' —collapsed on the ground, exhausted from the run she'd just completed. Although Leia had always been athletic and fit, nothing had prepared her for the grueling physical aspects of Jedi training. She'd thought at first that such things wouldn't be necessary since the Force could elevate all of Jedi's abilities to supernatural levels anyway. But Yoda had explained that, all other things being equal, a Jedi who was out of shape and overweight would have to use more of the Force to match the feats of a fit Jedi and while the Force itself was limitless, even the greatest Jedi had limits.

But before Leia could catch her breath, Yoda threw a silvery rod at her eyes. Leia instantly reacted by drawing and igniting the lightsaber Yoda had given her; it was only a Shoto and thus felt awkward in her hands; Leia swung the green blade at the rod—and missed; the bar fell to the ground untouched, much to Leia's frustration. A Jedi Knight, Yoda had said, would have cut it into seven pieces before it fell. Luke had managed six pieces in his latest test and even Mara had managed four pieces the very first time Yoda had tried this on her.

"I can't," Leia moaned, "I'm tired."

Yoda, showing no sympathy, retorted, "Strike from the shadows, the Sith do, when we are at our weakest; be prepared, a Jedi must always be."

Leia could only nod, breathing heavily and stood up again to begin the next exercise, determined to master the Jedi arts. She had at first seen the training as merely a means to an end, to help rescue Han and bring down the Empire, but Yoda had taught that the path of a Jedi was an end to itself in service to a much higher cause, the cause of life itself in service to the galaxy at large. A cause that the Jedi of old had lost sight of as they'd gotten too entangled in the politics of the Old Republic. And just as the New Republic the Rebels planned to establish would be built on the lessons learned from the Old Republic's mistakes, so too would their New Jedi Order correct the mistakes made by their predecessors.

**Then…Three Months Ago, Dagobah**

Leia was now glad that she'd never laughed at Luke during his many blind-remote training sessions over the past three years, because now she was in the same position, with a blast-shielded helmet blocking her vision as she used Yoda's green shoto to fend off a swarm of seeker droids. Yoda's droids were set to a much higher difficulty level than Luke's, which made them both more difficult to track and their shots—though still not lethal—certainly stung a lot more.

At the moment, though, Leia was feeling anything but glad; for every blast she did deflect, there were three that she missed and the sting of each one added to her growing frustration. She gritted her teeth and tried to concentrate but another stinging blast caused something to well up inside of her and then burst free; with a loud cry, Leia suddenly began moving much faster but the seekers abruptly halted their attack and fled behind Yoda.

"No, no, no!" Yoda declared, "That will not do!"

"I feel the Force," Leia vehemently protested.

"Anger is what you feel," said Yoda, "Anger, fear, aggression, the dark side are they; easily they flow and quick to join in a fight. But beware, the power that comes easily demands a heavy price."

"Price?" Leia lowered the lightsaber, "What price?"

"If you fight darkness with darkness, become the very thing you fight, you will."

Leia shivered, then said. "Is the Dark Side stronger?"

"No," said Yoda with a rap of his Gimer stick, "easier, more seductive, but not stronger."

"But the Emperor killed four Jedi Masters," said Leia.

"Powerful the Emperor is," Yoda admitted, "Defeated even I, he did; but the power of a Sith is a power without restraints. Not so the Jedi. _Appear_ stronger, the Sith do; _appear_ weaker, the Jedi do. An illusion that is."

**Then… Three Months ago, Dagobah**

Mara watched, somewhat puzzled as Luke and Leia bounded off into the swamp, following Yoda's instructions, and then turned to the Jedi Master, wondering why he had specifically held her back.

"Many questions I sense you have, youngling," Yoda said, "speak your mind."

Mara was silent for a moment, then said, "I'm not sure how much help you could be."

"Once, I too admired Palpatine," Yoda admitted, "During the Clone Wars, before I learned the truth; know much about him, I do."

"Okay," said Mara, "I keep wondering 'why me?' Why did the Emperor make me think I was someone special and unique; if I had known the truth from the start, I—," Mara took a deep breath and let it out slowly; what she was about to say she had never told anyone, especially not Luke. "I might still be loyal to him now, so I don't understand what he gained by deceiving me like that."

"A Sith, the Emperor is," said Yoda, "a creature of the Dark Side, full of lies and trickery; loyalty, compassion, attachment, all these things he does not and cannot comprehend, except in how they can be twisted for his own purposes."

Mara shivered. "He lied to me because he was incapable of thinking in any other way?"

"Gained power through lies, he did; retains it through lies, he does," said Yoda, "Sees everyone as either a tool or a threat, and sometimes both, he does."

"He sees _me_ as a threat?"

"Strong in the Force, you are," Yoda said, "Stronger than you think; in another era, an excellent Jedi Shadow you would have made."

"Jedi Shadow?"

"A Jedi trained in subterfuge and espionage, specially tasked with hunting the Sith and other darksiders."

"I see."

"But now," Yoda continued, "Talk we must about your attachment to Luke."

Mara blinked, "I—I'm not certain what you—,"

"Do not think me blind, youngling," said Yoda, "Eight hundred years have I trained Jedi; you may lie to yourself and to him, but lie to me you cannot."

"I just—I don't know what to do. He drives me crazy sometimes and yet I feel...drawn to him somehow; I've never felt that way about anyone before and it—it _scares_ me to see just how much a part of my life he has become in such a short time. I don't want to feel like I need anyone and yet—." Mara sighed. "I don't know what to do."

"Trust your instincts," said Yoda, "And you will know what to do."

**Then…Two Months Ago, Dagobah**

Luke and Mara sparred with their lightsabers. Again and again, Mara lunched at Luke but although the pattern and direction of her attack changed each time, Luke's blade was always there ahead of hers to block or parry her strikes. Mara made a slash-stroke that Luke intercepted and brushed aside. Mara raised her lightsaber high over her head and brought it down on Luke, who brought his own lightsaber up to block. For a moment their sabers locked in a contest of both will and strength.

But whereas Luke's face remained a serene mask, Mara's look of concentration and determining was becoming one of frustration, with sweat beading down her face. Mara started to pull back and that was when Luke finally made his move, altering the angle of his blade to impact hers in such a way and with enough force behind the blow to knock the hilt out of Mara's hand. Before it had even hit the floor, Luke had called it into his other hand.

For a moment Luke held Mara under both lightsaber blades and then shut them off. He extended the hand holding her hilt, only for Mara to suddenly grab the whole arm. The next thing Luke knew he was flying through the air and hit the ground painfully. He groaned and started to get up but Mara was on him. Letting go of the lightsabers, Luke tried to fight back hand-to-hand but here Mara had the edge and before he knew, she had him pinned on the ground with herself on top.

For a long moment their eyes locked as they both breathed heavily know. Suddenly Luke flipped Mara over so that he was the one on top. For another moment Luke stared into Mara's green eyes and then, following an instinct he didn't fully understand, Luke kissed her. Mara's surprise lasted only a second and then she eagerly reciprocated.

**Then…One Month Ago, Dagobah**

Leia stepped into the dark cave unarmed, shivering as she did from a cold that wasn't entirely physical. She halted, startled, when a dark figure emerged from the shadows. After a moment she saw that it was Darth Vader. Leia resisted the urge to turn and run and stood her ground.'

This isn't real' she told herself, 'this is an illusion.'The image of Vader lifted up its hands and began removing his mask. Leia gasped when she saw the face that was revealed, for it not was a man's face, but her own! Then, as suddenly as it had appeared, the illusion faded. Leia staggered and almost fell, suddenly realizing that she had somehow continued walking the whole time. Shaken to her core and breathing heavily, it was a long, long time before she emerged from the cave.

**Then…One Month Ago, Dagobah**

Mara Jade stepped into dark cave, unarmed. She longer doubted whether she even could fully commit to becoming a Jedi, as over the last several months, many conversations with Yoda, Leia and Luke had helped her to put things in perspective. Mara had spent much of her life so closed up emotionally that, until meeting Luke, she hadn't even realized how much a part of life she'd been missing. That emotional openness of him drove her crazy sometimes and yet she'd hungered to feel it for herself; Luke had accepted her unconditionally, dark past and all.

The cave swirled around her and was suddenly replaced by a dimly lit room. At the far end of the room was a throne like the one the Emperor had, and beyond that was window into space. At either side of the throne stood two more dark figures.

As Mara drew closer, the throne and the two figures turned towards her, and Mara was taken aback by what she saw. Sitting in the chair, and wearing the dark robes of the Emperor, was Luke Skywalker—his blue eyes now yellowed like the Emperor's. With a start Mara also recognized one of the other people: it was Leia and, like her brother, her eyes were yellowed. The other person Mara had never met but had only seen a picture of: Shira Brie. Her hair was a darker shade of red, her once green eyes yellowed like the other two, and she had a different facial structure—with different features—but nonetheless the physical resemblance was striking.

"So," Shira sneered, "You have come at last, but you are too late." Shira sat down sideways across Luke's lap and even knowing that this was all an illusion couldn't stop Mara from feeling a surge of anger and jealousy, "You think he cares for you?" Shira mocked her, "He doesn't, you're just a stand-in for me, because nothing can replace me in his heart. I was there for him when no one else was; I cared for him before you had even heard of him. And now that I am back, he doesn't need you anymore."

"Lies!" Mara declared, "Luke would never do that to me, you don't know him."

"Oh, but I do," Shira replied, "I know him better than you possibly could."

Shira's image reached up and kissed Luke; the illusion swirled and changed, suddenly it was the Emperor sitting on the throne, with Vader by his side.

"Come, my Hand," the Emperor said, in that oozing tone of false civility that had fooled her so many times in the past, "look upon my new apprentice."

For a moment was confused. 'New apprentice?' She could see Vader here, but when turned to look at him, Vader removed his helmet. And what Mara saw underneath it almost stopped her heart for it was Luke's face.

"No," Mara declared, "This won't happen; this isn't real!"

And suddenly, just like that, she was back in the cave; she staggered and nearly fell, her heart pounding and breathing heavily. It was a long time before she was able to move again.

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"So," said Han, "what happened to this 'Master Yoda' you keep mentioning."

Luke's face tightened, "He's dead."

**Then…Two Days Ago, Dagobah**

Three young Jedi crowded into the small hut that Yoda had called home for over two decades, sitting around the bed where—at last—the nine-hundred-year old Jedi Master was dying.

"That face you make," Yoda said, "look I so old to your eyes."

"No," Luke said, "of course not."

"I do," said Yoda, "Yes, I do. Sick have I become, old and weak."

"Master Yoda," Leia said, "you can't die."

"Strong am I with the Force," said Yoda, "but not that strong. Twilight is upon me and soon night must fall. That is the way of things. The way of the Force."

"But there is so much more we need to learn," Luke said.

"A Jedi is always learning," Yoda said, "the master always learns as much from the student, as the student learns from the master. But no more training do you require from me, learned you have what you need to do what you must."

"What are you talking about?" Leia asked.

Yoda looked at Luke, "Now is the time, tell them."

Both Mara and Leia looked at Luke, puzzled.

Luke sighed and said, "When I was facing Vader on Bespin, he told me…he said that he was my father." Luke locked gazes with the shocked Leia. "Our father, though I don't think he knows about you."

"Yet," Yoda admonished, "Know he will, soon enough."

Leia's head was spinning—both from this revelation—and the fact that Luke had kept it from her for this long.

Mara, though as surprised in her own way as Leia, felt as if the last pieces were finally clicking into place. Now so many things suddenly made a lot more sense.

"How," Leia finally said, "how is that possible?"

"Vader was not always the monster you know," said Yoda, "A great Jedi he once was, and a great man. But seduced by the Dark Side, he was. Confront him and the Emperor, you must; then, Jedi Knights you will be. But do not—," Yoda briefly succumbed to coughing, "Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor; from the Dark Side, unnatural abilities he has gained. Beware of fear, anger, hate, the Dark Side are they; if once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny."

Yoda turned to Luke and Mara. "Very careful, you two must be, in your attachment; save you it could, but dangerous it is as well; be prepared to let go, you must, or suffer Vader's fate you will." Yoda lay back in his bed, "When gone am I, the last of the Jedi you will be. Pass on what you have learned."

Yoda breathed his last and his body vanished.

They sat there for a long moment, thinking about all that had been said. Abruptly Leia rose and moved out of the cramped hut. Luke and Mara followed her but no sooner had Luke gotten to his feet outside than he did find himself facing Leia, who had whirled about with an angry expression on her face. Her hand came up and she struck Luke across the face.

" _You had no right to keep that from me_!"

"Up until four months ago, we didn't even know that we were siblings," Luke fired back at her, "So when should I have told you? The day after _I_ learned it? I didn't even _want_ to believe it six months ago, I was still half-convinced that Vader had lied to me, so why would I or should I have said anything to anyone else? What would that have accomplished?" Leia just stood there, hands propped on her hips, glaring at him, "And even after Yoda told us we were siblings, I was still in denial."

"He must have confirmed it to you at some point, didn't he?"

"While you and Mara went off running in the swamp for the first time," Luke admitted.

"And so why didn't you tell me when I got back?"

"Because," Luke said, "We both decided that you weren't ready to know."

"You had no right to make that decision."

"Just stop and think for a moment," said Luke, "You _hate_ Darth Vader—,"

"And with good reason!"

"Yes, I know," Luke said, "And _that_ was why Yoda believed that you were not ready; remember what he taught us about the Dark Side."

For a moment Leia's glare intensified, then she threw up her arms and crossed them, turning away from him and lowering her head.

Much though she didn't want to admit it, Luke did have a point. She sighed.

"I still do not see how that monster could ever have been a normal person. Or how we can defeat him and the Emperor without Master Yoda?"

"Yoda and I will always be with you."

The three young Jedi turned to see Obi-Wan's ghost. Leia and Mara's eyes widened, for this was their first time they'd seen him. Leia recovered quickly, though.

"How are we supposed to defeat Vader and the Emperor," Leia demanded, "when hundreds of Jedi more experienced than us failed?"

"And how do you define experience?" Obi-Wan said, "If you mean knowledge of the Force, then yes; by the standards of the old Jedi Order, you would all still be considered Padawans. That you still managed to learn as much as you have in such a short time is nonetheless impressive. But there are other types of experiences, experiences that the old Order did not have for we took our students while they were still very young. But that proved to be one of the factors that led to our downfall, which is why your training was different."

"But _how_ did Anakin fall," Leia asked. "How did he become that…that monster, Vader."

"It was not something that happened overnight," said Obi-Wan, "And Yoda and I are at least to blame as Anakin and the Emperor are. It was a different time, in addition to taking students while they were still children, the old Jedi Order banned romantic attachments."

"Why?" Luke asked

"Because we were afraid," Obi-Wan admitted, "afraid of the Dark Side, though no one at the time would have admitted it. Too many students in the past had been lost to the Dark Side, and so we tried to protect future generations of students from temptation—and in the process we turned ourselves into a parody of our enemy and allowed our fears to blind us to the truth that was right in front of us the whole time. Into that mess was brought Anakin, who started his training at a much older age than was typical; because of that, and because the Jedi Council was reluctant to even accept him at first, Anakin always felt like the outsider—never fully trusted or accepted, not even by me I am sorry to say. Palpatine exploited that and became the accepting mentor figure that Anakin craved but couldn't find from me."

"And what about our mother," Luke asked, "Who was she? How does she fit into this?"

"Your mother," Obi-Wan said to Luke and Leia, "was Padme Amidala."

Leia's eyes widened. "I know that name; my fa—Bail has told me stories about her; he said that she was his close colleague in the Senate, and her niece Pooja is a dear friend from my own time in the Senate."

"Yes," said Obi-Wan with a wry smile. "Padme was quite the character; in her own way, she was at least as headstrong and as stubborn as Anakin; a passionate idealist and fervent believer in democracy and the Republic to the end. I am not surprised that they fell in love and married, but Anakin did more than just love her. He was _obsessed_ with her and in the end it was that obsession, and his inability to let go of it, that led him to the Dark Side."

"There is still good in him," Luke insisted. Both Leia and Mara shook their heads vehemently. Leia remembered too well Vader torturing her and then forcing her to watch the destruction of Alderaan. Mara, from her own brief encounters with Vader, had also seen too much of his evil.

Obi-Wan also sadly shook his head, "Padme said those very same words, right before she died after giving birth. But he's more machine now than man, twisted and evil. You cannot escape your destinies, you must face Darth Vader and the Emperor."

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

"So," said Han, "How exactly did things go down you showed up on Jabba's doorstep? What did I miss?"

**Then…Jabba the Hutt's Palace, Tatooine**

Disguised once again, Leia pulled the handcuffed Chewbacca into the audience chamber in Jabba's Palace. In her best Ubese, she said, "Greetings, Mighty Jabba. I am Boussh. I found this Wookiee sneaking around in Mos Eisley; I have come for the bounty on him."

"Ahh," Jabba said in Huttese, "At last someone has brought me the mighty Chewbacca. I bid you welcome, Boussh, and will pay you the reward of 25,000.""

Remembering what Guri had told her about this particular bounty hunter, Leia replied in Ubese, "I want fifty thousand, no less."

Jabba visibly raged for a moment and then finally said, "And what makes you think that I will pay you that much."

Leia produced the thermal detonator, flicking it to deadman mode. The bomb began ticking and beeping, causing many in Jabba's court to suddenly back up as if that would help them. Boba Fett and the guards all drew their blasters but Jabba just laughed.

"This bounty hunter is my kind of scum," he said, "fearless and inventive. I offer a sum of thirty-five thousand for the Wookiee, but no more."

"Agreed," Leia replied in Ubese and shut off the thermal detonator. The guards advanced and began dragging away the struggling Wookiee.

Jabba's band launched into another musical number.

Leia spent the rest of the day looking around the audience chamber, taking the measure of where everyone and everything was.

That evening the front gate at Jabba's Palace opened briefly, just long enough to admit Luke Skywalker, Mara Jade, C-3P0 and R2-D2.

As the quartet walked deeper into Jabba's Palace, a pair of Gammorrean guards moved to block their progress with their vibro-axes. Luke and Mara both raised a hand and called on the Force; weak-willed as the Gammorrean's were, they easily succumbed and seconds later were sleeping soundly on the ground.

The next person the quartet encountered was Jabba's majordomo, Bib Fortuna; he started babbling in Huttese about how they weren't welcome here…until another mind-trick from Luke had him sleeping on the ground next to the Gammorreans.

As they neared Jabba's audience chamber, the quartet was met by Lando Calrissian, who was disguised as a guard, and by Leia, still in her bounty hunter disguise. They walked up to the slab of carbonite in which Han was frozen. Leia lowered the slab to the ground and then started the thawing process. Soon Han was free and fell to the ground. Leia spoke to him, her voice flat and metallic from her mask. "Just relax, for a moment. You're free of the carbonite." Han managed to sit up and rubbed his eyes. "Shh, you have hibernation sickness."

"I can't see," Han finally said.

"Your eyesight will return in time."

"Where am I?"

"Jabba's Palace."

Han grabbed at Leia's mask and then drew back. "Who are you?"

Leia removed the mask and said, "Someone who loves you."

"Leia," Han gasped and for one long, precious moment they kissed with the fervent urgency of lovers torn from each other and then reunited. "Come on," Leia finally said, helping Han to stand, "Let's get you out of here."

But then came a booming laughter.

"What's that." The laugh boomed again and then Han recognized it, "I know that laugh." He turned towards it just as the curtain slid aside to reveal Jabba and his court laughing at them. Leia produced the thermal detonator that she'd used earlier to threaten Jabba, armed it and tossed it at Jabba. His laughter sputtered out abruptly as he recognized it and he had just enough to time to cry out in startled fear before the bomb went off.

Leia turned Han away from the explosion but they were still knocked off their feet by the shockwave; Jabba and his court, however, were incinerated.

"What just happened?" Han asked,

"Thermal detonator," Leia said, "Wait, hold on for a moment." Leia let go of him and quickly stood. Boba Fett was approaching with several thugs.

Three lightsaber blades activated—Luke's green, Leia's blue, and Mara's purple. Fett and the thugs raised their blasters and opened fire. The three Jedi deflected the initial barrage and then, following an old Jedi axiom, they advanced into their attackers.

Leia wove her lightsaber back and forth as a she advanced, deflecting each of Fett's shots. As Leia drew closer, Fett stopped firing and shifted slightly, bringing up his wrist mounted-flamethrower—just in time for Leia to slice through Fett's wrists with her lightsaber. Leia used the momentum of charge to spin in a full circle and the next thing her lightsaber severed was Fett's neck.

**Now… The Millennium Falcon, Hyperspace**

Han sat in the pilot seat in the Falcon's cockpit, pondering and grappling with all the recent revelations about the last six months—even that was just a bare outline, the highlights as it were, but one thing disturbed him the most. Although he would never have expected that Leia would even think about reaching out to Black Sun, let alone that Lando would actually go along with it, one thing was even more shocking than that, even more shocking than Luke going two for two in the 'dating your own assassin department', even more shocking than Leia turning out to be Luke's twin sister and now having a lightsaber and Jedi powers of her own, even more shocking than the sheer audacity of sneaking onto Coruscant to rescue Leia from Xizor, even more shocking than Leia killing Boba Fett, even more shocking than the news of the new Death Star, and as they dropped out of hyperspace to meet up with Rebel Fleet in the Sullust system, it remained the one thing he still couldn't wrap his mind around:

"I still can't believe you let the droids fly my ship."


	2. Chapter 2:

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Disclaimer: Disney owns it now, but I don't care what they're up to.

In the Sullust system the Rebel fleet gathered: vast Mon Calamari star cruisers, Nebulon-B frigates captured from the Empire, Assault Frigates converted from old Republic Dreadnoughts, Corellian gunships and corvettes, recommissioned Alderaanian frigates, Venator-class Star Destroyers reclaimed from junkyards, ex-CIS warships carefully hidden for years, bulk cruisers converted to carriers for all kinds of Starfighters: X-Wings, Y-Wings, A-Wings, B-Wings, T-Wings, Z-95's, Skipray's and gunboats.

The Rebels had never gathered their entire fleet into one place before, but even this vast force was not the full might of the Rebellion; for it did not include the various Sector Forces all across the Empire that were, even now, staging attacks against countless Imperial targets.

In the war room of the Rebel flagship, _Home One_ , hundreds of Rebel commanders of many species gathered and awaited orders. The grapevine was alive with rumors and excitement. At the center of the room was a large circular table with a holo-projector, currently inactive.

Lando Calrissian made his way through the crowd and over to his friends.

"Well, look at you," Han said, "A general."

Lando grinned. "Someone must have told them about my little maneuver at the Battle of Tanaab." Tanaab was an agarian planet that had been raided seasonally by bandits from the nearby planet Norualac. Before Lando's stint as Baron-Administrator of Cloud City, he had wiped out the bandits against all odds, using unheard of strategies and exceptional flying. And all for a bet.

"Well don't look at me," said Han, "I just told them you were a fair pilot, I had no idea they were looking for someone to lead this crazy attack."

"I'm surprised they didn't ask you to do it."

"Well who says they didn't?" Han smirked. "But I ain't crazy. You're the respectable one, remember?"

The conversations died down when Mon Mothma, a stately middle-aged woman dressed in white and the elected leader of the Rebel Alliance, arrived with two of her chief military advisors: General Crix Madine and Admiral Gial Ackbar. Madine was in charge of the Rebel Alliance's Special Forces and, like many other Rebels, was an ex-Imperial. In Madine's case, he had created the notorious Imperial Storm Commandos before his defection. Ackbar was a Mon Calamari and a veteran of the Clone Wars where he had led the defense of his people against the Separatist-influenced Quarren.

"The Emperor has made a critical error and the time for our attack has come." The lights dimmed as the central holo-projector activated, projecting a holographic display of the unfinished Death Star, hovering beside the moon of Endor. "The data brought to us by the Bothan spies pinpoints the exact location of the Emperor's new battlestation. With the Imperial fleet spread throughout the galaxy in a vain effort to engage us, it is relatively unprotected. We also know that the weapon systems of this Death Star are not yet operational. But mostly importantly—," Mon Mothma paused for emphasis, "we have learned that the Emperor himself is personally overseeing the final stages of the construction of this Death Star. Many Bothans died to bring us this information."

Luke, who had been there when they'd died, nodded grimly at the price they'd paid for this information.

Mara frowned and pursed her lips in thought.

"Admiral Ackbar, please," Mon Mothma finished and Ackbar stepped forward.

"You can see here the Death Star orbiting the forest moon of Endor. Although the weapon systems on this Death Star are not yet operational, the Death Star does have a strong defense mechanism. It is protected by an energy shield, which is generated from the nearby forest moon of Endor." Ackbar pressed a button on the table and a coruscating energy shield appeared, encompassing both the Death Star and the Endor moon. "The shield must be deactivated if any attack is to be attempted." Another button enlarged the display of the Death Star so that it occupied the full space of the projector and showed a simplified internal schematic. "Once the shield is down our cruisers will create a perimeter while the fighters fly into the superstructure and make an attempt to knock out the main reactor." Ackbar pressed one last button and the holoprojector shut off, bringing the lights back up. "General Calrissian has volunteered to lead the fighter attack."

"Good luck," Han said. "You're gonna need it."

"General Madine," Ackbar said and Madine stepped forward.

"We have stolen a small Imperial shuttle," said Madine. "Disguised as a cargo ship, but using a secret Imperial code, a strike tream will land on the moon and deactivate the shield generator."

"It sounds dangerous," Threepio said over a sudden murmur throughout the room.

"I wonder who they found to pull that off," Leia said sotto voce to Han, who looked at her incredulously.

"General Solo," Madine continued, "Is your strike team assembled?" Now it was Leia's turn to wear that sudden incredulous, disbelieving look at the news that Han had finally, officially, joined them.

"Uhh, my team is ready," said Han, "but I don't have a command crew for the shuttle." Chewie interjected a sharp growl and raised his paw. "It's gonna be rough, pal, I didn't want to speak with you." But Chewie insisted with another growl. "That's one."

"General," said Leia, savoring the title, "Count me in."

"I'm with you too," said Luke.

"As am I," Mara added.

The assembly broke up into many small groups for last minute farewells.

Artoo beeped a singsong observation to Threepio, who replied, "'Exciting' is hardly the word I would choose." Being a translation droid, of course, Threepio was then immediately occupied trying to pick the right word to describe the present situation.

Luke went and found his good friend Wedge Antilles.

"You sure you want to be a ground-pounder on this Luke?" Wedge asked. "After all, you destroyed the first one of these things. It doesn't feel right to have you grounded for the second one."

"There are few things I enjoy more than flying," Luke said, "But the squadron is yours now; your destiny, for a time anyway, will be to lead the Rogues to victory, for I sense that even if we win this battle, there will be many more yet to fight. My destiny, however, is to restore the Jedi Order."

"I don't know which one of us has the harder task," Wedge said. They clasped hands. "May the Force be with you."

"And with you."

Down in one of the hanger bays of _Home One_ sat, among other ships, the _Millennium Falcon_ and the captured Imperial shuttle. Halfway between the two ships Han and Lando were saying their own farewells, in their own way:

"Look," Han said, "I want you to take her. I mean it, take her. You need all the help you can get, she's the fastest ship in the fleet."

Lando put up his hands. "All right old buddy. You know, I know what she means to you. I'll take good care of her. She—she won't get a scratch."

Han started for the shuttle, then turned back with a warm smile, "I got your promise. Not a _scratch_."

"Look, would you get going you pirate."

They exchanged jaunty salutes.

"Good luck."

"You, too."

They parted without another word as none more needed to be said.

As Han entered the cockpit of the Imperial shuttle, Luke was doing some fine-tuning on a rear navigator panel. Mara was seated behind him and the droids stood near her. Major Derlin, the leader of the commando team, was seated across from her. Chewbacca, in the copilot's seat, was trying to figure out the Imperial controls.

"You got her warmed up?" Han asked as he took the pilot's seat.

"Yeah, she's coming up," Luke replied.

Chewie growled grumpily.

"No, I don't think the Empire had Wookiees in mind when then designed her, Chewie."

Leia entered and took her seat next to Luke.

Chewie barked and hit some switches, starting the preflight. Han found his attention drawn to the Falcon, which could be seen from the window. For a moment, he just stared at the ship that had been and still was—in so many ways—his life. So many times she had saved him with her speed, and so many times he had saved her with his cunning. So many things they had seen together.

"Hey," Leia nudged him gently, "Are you awake?" She was reluctant to interrupt this moment, knowing that Han had a special love for his ship, but time was dear.

"Yeah, I just got a funny feeling," said Han, "Like I'm not gonna see her again."

"Come on, General," said Leia softly, "Let's move."

"Right," Han said, "Okay, Chewie, let's see what this piece of junk can do. Ready everybody?"

"All set," said Luke.

Threepio said quietly, "Here we go again."

Han threw some more switches and the stolen shuttle lifted off, eased out of the docking bay and headed out into space, lowering its wings into flight position.

"All right. Hang on," Han pushed the hyperdrive lever and the shuttle jumped to hyperspace.

Darth Vader stepped out of the elevator into the Emperor's throne room on the new Death Star. He ignored the Royal Guards standing on either side of the door, clad in red and holding force pikes, and walked across the black floor, past the deep chasm off to the right, and up the stairs to the platform where the Emperor's throne sat before a huge circular window.

The Emperor was sitting in his chair and staring out into space, at the uncompleted half of the Death Star where men in space suits even now labored, and at the green moon of Endor beyond that glimmered like a jewel in the blackness of space. A blackness that was broken up only by the twinkling of distant stars, like specs of diamonds.

Darth Vader paused and knelt behind his master, awaiting recognition. The Emperor let him wait and continued perusing the vista of all that was his and more. It had not always been so. Once Palpatine had merely been a Senator and the galaxy had been a Republic under the care and protection of the Jedi Knights. So it had been for thousands of years.

But corruption had set in and eroded the foundations of the Republic, not quickly but slowly, like the slow drip of water over a rock. Greedy senators, arrogant bureaucrats, perverted officials. Like a vast tree, the Republic had withstood many external assaults but all the while had continued to rot from within.

Into that mix had come Senator Palpatine; through fraud, subterfuge, bribery, terror, clever promises, astute political maneuvering and manufactured crises, he had risen to become Supreme Chancellor of the Senate and then had become accumulating more and more power, all the while presenting the façade of a mild-mannered but well-meaning politician from a backwater world, who had only risen to his position by chance.

Then had come the Separatist Crisis, followed by the Clone Wars. Few knew even today the true purpose of that conflict, namely that it had been a diversion, an illusion, a Jedi Trap on a grand scale. Merely by fighting at all they had already lost and by the time they'd realized it, it had been too late for them to stop their extermination at the hands of the very soldiers they'd trusted their lives to. The Republic had finally fallen and from its ashes had risen the Empire.

An Empire ostensibly devoted to order, security, and peace, but the Emperor knew better. Everything and everyone in the Empire existed solely for the Emperor's own benefit; nothing less and nothing more. The Empire would live as long as the Emperor lived, and the Emperor intended to live forever; and if he did not, then nothing else mattered.

Finally, the Emperor rotated his chair and gazed at his still kneeling apprentice.

"What is thy bidding, my master?"

"Send the fleet to the far side of Endor," the Emperor said, "There it will stay until called for."

"What of the reports of the Rebel fleet massing near Sullust?"

"It is of no concern," said the Emperor, "Soon the Rebellion will be crushed and young Skywalker will be one of us."

"And what of young Jade?" Vader asked, "I have reports that she has been seen in Skywalker's company."

"It changes nothing," the Emperor said, "the Rebels have no choice but to attack, and they know it as well as we do. She will be dealt with in due time."

"Yes, my master."

"Your work here is finished, my friend," the Emperor continued, "Go out to the command ship and await my order."

"As you wish, my master."

Vader rose and exited. The Emperor turned back to the window that showed his domain.

Once aboard the command ship, Vader withdrew to his hyperbaric chamber. He was about to seal it up when two people entered the room: Jix, one of Vader's many human operatives, and Kohvrekhar, a Noghri Death Commando.

"Report."

"Skywalker has retrieved Solo from Jabba's Place," the Noghri stated, "With him were Jade, Princess Organa, the Wookiee, and the gambler Calrissian."

"The Princess is something different," Jix added, "First she deep-fried Jabba with a thermal detonator and then she cut down Boba Fett with a _lightsaber_. I've never seen _anyone_ move that fast."

Behind his mask, Vader frowned. Organa had a lightsaber? And, if Jix was to be believed, not only knew how to use it but possessed Force abilities? At first that didn't seem to make sense and yet…

And yet Vader remembered sensing tremendous strength within her during her interrogation…and something else as well, something he hadn't quite been able to put his finger on.

"Although I didn't get very close," Kohvrekhar said, "I was still close enough to get a whiff of her scent and it was very similar to Skywalker's scent…and to yours, my lord."

For a moment Vader just sat there trying to understand why Kohvrekhar would say that. Noghri had a _very_ sensitive sense of smell—one so good in fact that they could even sense blood relationships…and suddenly the pieces all came together: Force abilities, a strange sense of familiarity, a definite resemblance to _her_ , and a similar scent to Luke and himself….

_'I am a fool! Why didn't I realize it before?_ ' His right hand came up in a fist and all the glass in the room suddenly shattered, startling both Jix and Kohvrekhar.

"My lord?" the Noghri asked cautiously.

"Leave!" Vader snapped, barely in control of his anger and both of them hastened to obey.

_'I was right; she was carrying a girl. We were both right….twins!'_

The Force must have a twisted sense of humor and Kenobi…Kenobi had died _much_ too quickly and too painlessly. He deserved to suffer a thousand painful deaths for this!

Yet even now, four years after killing him, Vader could still almost hear Kenobi's chiding voice:

_I'm not the one who tortured her, Anakin._

Vader pressed a button on the chair and from the top of the chamber a metallic arm descended, grasped onto Vader's helmet, then lifted it up and suddenly he could not breathe. Vader stoked the anger he was already feeling with his anger at his condition, on his hatred of Obi-Wan, and of the Emperor, and on the pain he felt every moment of every day. The energies of the Dark Side filled him and for a moment he could breath as normal men could.

Vader focused his anger and fought the sense of relief, clung to the feelings of pain even as they were fading. He concentrated on the injustice of his condition, the unfairness of being confined to this suit. His anger held and so did the healing energies. One minute became two; two minutes became five.

He was becoming stronger and soon he would add Luke _and_ Leia's power to his own and finally be able to shed this armor and walk as normal men walked—Vader fought the joy that threatened to erupt…and failed. The healing energies evaporated and Vader could breathe no more. With a gesture he sealed the hyperbaric chamber.

Still, he had held for five minutes now, a new record, and Vader knew that it was possible to hold such energies indefinitely. The Sith Lord Darth Scion, who had lived some four thousand years ago, had managed to survive injuries so severe that the Force itself was all that had kept his body intact. And he had lived like that for years. But, unfortunately for Vader, Scion had not left behind a holocron describing _how_ he had accomplished that feat—forcing Vader to try and reinvent the technique through trial and error. The fact that he was getting better seemed to show that he was on the right path, but one thing continued to hold him back: that small spot of light within the dark, a tiny fragment of Anakin Skywalker that Vader had never been able to purge from himself.

That was his flaw, Vader knew, the thing that was stopping him from completely immersing himself in the Dark Side. A flaw that Vader had never been able to eradicate over the past twenty-three years no matter how hard he'd tried. A tiny spot that had become a little larger the moment Vader had learned that a piece of _her_ still lived in his son—inarguable proof that the Emperor had lied to him even then…and that was a little larger now that he'd realized the truth about Leia.

Vader had _known_ , beyond any doubt, that Luke was son from the moment he'd heard the boy's name and his first instinct had been to find him and train him. But if the Starkiller fiasco had taught Vader one thing, it was that a secret apprentice could never be concealed from the Emperor. And so Vader had pursued another course of action, one partially inspired by the Emperor's own behavior during the Clone Wars. Vader had used all the official reasons for pursuing Luke to mask another agenda: every attempt to capture him had been genuine enough to fool almost anyone but in truth Luke's escapes had served Vader's purposes almost as well as his capture would have, for each time Luke had learned something valuable.

And so for several years Vader had taught his son from afar, all the while expending considerable efforts to keep the Emperor from learning Luke's name, and it seemed to have been working. It was through Vader's distant manipulations that Luke had crossed paths with and defeated Baron Orman Tagge and the Dark Jedi Kharys—the former of whom had been a longtime thorn in Vader's side and the latter of whom Vader had personally trained—and in so doing learned valuable lessons about fighting. Janek Sunber, Domina Tagge and Shira Brie had each been used to teach Luke about betrayal in an effort to harden and isolate him.

Unfortunately, Vader had eventually realized that he must not have been careful enough for the Emperor had at some point gotten wise to his plans; their conversation shortly after the Battle of Hoth had proven—once again—that nothing could be hidden from the Emperor, and Vader had been forced to both move up and modify his plans.

On Cloud City Vader had finally faced his son in combat and that fight had made him _feel_ , like he had never felt before—challenged him in a way he hadn't been challenged in far too long. The boy was nearly ripe now, Vader could feel it. He just needed one more little nudge and he would embrace the Dark Side. And _Leia_ …she might more closely resemble _her_ and have even taken the same job as _her_ , but Leia's personality was much more like his own. And, if Jix's report was accurate, she was already not thinking or acting like a Jedi. That was…promising.

The space about Endor bustled with activity as construction proceeded on the Death Star. Transports, shuttles, freighters, and TIE Fighters flew about the area, a hive of frantic activity overseen by the massive Super Destroyer _Executor_. In the midst of it all, the arrival of yet another shuttle went almost unnoticed.

"If they don't go for this," said Han, "We're gonna have to get out of here pretty quick, Chewie." Chewie growled an agreement though everyone knew that this puny shuttle wasn't about to outrun anything. A voice came over the comms:

"We have you on our screen now, please identify."

"Shuttle Tydirium," said Han, sounding every bit like a bored Imperial pilot, "requesting deactivation of the deflector shield."

"Shuttle Tydirium," the controller replied, "transmit the clearance code for shield passage."

"Transmission commencing," Han said.

Tension mounted in the cockpit as the transmission began.

Leia bit her lip. "Now we find out if that code is worth the price we paid," she said. The Super Star Destroyer was getting larger in the viewport and she was getting a very cold feeling creeping up her spine, as well something dark, dread and foreboding and somehow familiar.

"It'll work," Han said. "It'll work."

Chewie whined nervously.

Luke stared at the huge Super Star Destroyer that loomed in front of them, like a glittering, malignant cataract—and filled with an all-too familiar black fear.

"Vader's on that ship," Luke whispered.

"Now don't get jittery, Luke," Han said, "There are a lot of command ships."

"Luke's right," Mara said, also staring at the ship. "That's Vader."

Although Leia had never sensed Vader in the Force before, she nonetheless nodded as well, her throat suddenly dry.

"Keep your distance though, Chewie," Han continued, "but don't look like you're trying to keep your distance. Chewie barked the obvious question. "I don't know. Fly casual."

"We're endangering the mission," Luke said quietly, echoing the thoughts of Leia and Mara. "We shouldn't' have come."

"It's your imagination, kid," Han said trying to sound dismissively, though all this negativity was starting to get to him, "Come on, let's keep a little optimism."

"I don't know," Leia tightly, "they're taking a long time with that code clearance."

Even Chewie mumbled grimly.

Lord Vader had been standing on the bridge of the Executor contemplating the Death Star through the viewscreen: a technological terror even greater than its predecessor, a monument to the Dark Side and the physical embodiment of the Tarkin Doctrine. And then, all at once he became absolutely still and cast his senses out.

Someone was here. An echo only he had heard, a vibration only he had felt, had passed—no, had not passed, was still there at the edge of perception, swirling the moment and altering the shape of things. Someone was here…someone familiar.

Vader turned and walked down a row of controllers, finally pausing next to Admiral Piett, who was leaning over the tracking screen of one of the controllers. Piett straightened at his approach, then bowed stiffly.

"Where is that shuttle going?" Vader demanded without preamble. Piett leaned back down and spoke into the comlink.

"Shuttle Tydirium, what is your cargo and destination?"

The filtered voice of the shuttle pilot replied, "Parts and technical personnel for the forest moon."

Piett looked to Vader, awaiting a reaction and hoping that nothing was wrong.

"Do they have a code clearance?" Vader questioned.

"It's an older code, but it checks out," Piett replied immediately. "I was about to clear them." There was no point in lying to Vader; he always knew if someone was lying. When Vader made no immediate reply, just stared at the screen, Piett continued hurriedly, "Should I hold them?"

"No," Vader finally said, "Leave them to me. I will deal with them myself

"As you wish, my Lord," Piett bowed, sounded a bit surprised. He nodded at the controller and said, "Carry on."

In the _Tydirium_ the Rebels waited tensely.

"They're not going for it, Chewie," Han said, finally starting to sound grim as well. It was taking too long and more questions about things like cargo and destination would increase the danger of blowing their cover.

The static voice of the controller broke up, and then came in clearly over the comlink. "Shuttle Tydirium, deactivation of the shield will commence immediately. Follow your present course."

Han and Chewie exhaled in simultaneous relief, as if their trouble was all over now instead of only just beginning. Luke, Leia, and Mara all continued to stare at the command ship, engaged in their own silent and complex dialogue.

"Okay," Han grinned as Chewie barked loudly, "I told you it was gonna to work, no problem."

Han maneuvered the stolen shuttle smoothly toward the green moon.

On the _Executor_ Vader, Piett, and the controller watched as the deflector shield parted just long enough to admit the _Tydirium,_ which headed slowly down toward Endor.

"Ready my shuttle," Vader announced, "I must go to the Emperor." Without waiting for a response, Vader turned and strode off.

* * *

The Sanctuary Moon commonly called Endor was the second and furthest moon of a gas giant by the same name. Much of Endor was a blue-green forest—verdant, wild and primeval, with trees that stretched a thousand feet high, some as big around as a house while others were as thin as a leg. Light filtered through their canopies as a gentle golden ichor and gave life to a wide array of flora and fauna.

The stolen Imperial shuttle sat in a clearing on a hill miles from the Imperial base, it's stark and white appearance incongruous in the forest. The Rebel strike was slowly making its way down the hill through the woods. Wearing camo over their normal clothes, or none at all in Chewie's case, Leia, Chewie, Han, Luke and Mara led the way, followed in single file by Major Derlin and a squad of scruffy-looking commandos—these were the elite of the Rebel Alliances SpecForce, each hand-picked for their initiative, cunning and ferocity, and all possessed of a hatred for the Empire that exceeded self-preservation. All of them knew that this was the most crucial raid of the war and that if they failed, the Rebellion was doomed and there would be no second chances; and so as they moved silently through the forest, they were alert to all of their surroundings.

Up ahead, the leaders reached and paused at a ridge above a glen. Chewbacca raised a paw to signal the rest of the group to stop. All at once the forest seemed much more silent. Through the ferns, Luke, Mara, Han, Chewie and Leia could see two Imperial scouts in the glen; they'd set up a temporary camp and their two speeder bikes were parked nearby.

"Shall we try and go around?" Leia whispered.

"It'll take time," Luke replied.

"This whole party'll be for nothing if they see us," Han said.

"This whole party'll be for nothing," Mara retorted, "if the base goes on high alert after one of their patrols goes missing."

"Good point," said Han, "Okay, we'll go around." The fleet wouldn't arrive until tomorrow (local time) anyway.

The corridor outside the throne room was filled with courtiers, all waiting on the merest chance that the Emperor might deign to grant them an audience. Pompous toadies clad in gaudy overpriced clothes, with painted faces and heavy perfumes, bent low from the weight of jewelry still warm from its previous owner.

Behind his mask Vader curled his lip at them; had no patience for such filth and passed without a nod, though many of them would have paid dearly for a favorable glance from the Dark Lord.

Vader found the door to the Emperor's private turbolift closed, with red-robed royal guards flanking it.

"Halt!" One of them commanded as they crossed their force-pikes in Vader's path, "the Emperor does not wish to be disturbed at this time."

Vader did not waste time with words; he merely raised his hand, lifting up both guards and hurled them off to the side. Vader stepped into the turbolift without another word and when the doors opened again, he walked past two more royal guards, up the stairs and approached the throne.

The Emperor was gazing out into space and did not turn at Vader's arrival.

"I told you to remain on the command ship," the Emperor said sternly.

"A small Rebel force has penetrated the shield and landed on Endor."

Now at last the Emperor did turn his chair to face Vader,

"Yes, I know," the Emperor said without any surprise in his tone.

Vader noted this for a moment, then continued, "My son is with them."

The Emperor's brow furrowed ever so slightly, then said very coolly and with only a trace of curiosity, "Are you sure?"

"I have felt him, my master." In Sith terms, and especially coming from the apprentice, this was almost a taunt; for though he would never openly admit it, Vader knew that the Emperor feared young Skywalker and his power.

"Strange that I have not," the Emperor murmured, his eyes narrowing into slits. "I wonder if your feelings on this matter are clear, Lord Vader."

"They are clear, my master." Vader knew his son's presence, it was both galling and fueling, a lure beckoning to him with a howling voice.

"Then you must go to the Sanctuary Moon and wait for him," the Emperor said simply.

"He will come to me?" Vader asked skeptically; he felt drawn, almost compelled.

"I have foreseen it," The Emperor assured him. One could not be coerced into corruption, you had to be seduced, an active participant; in order to accept the darkness, you had to crave it, "his compassion for you will be his undoing." Compassion had always been and would always be the weakness of the Jedi. "He will come to you, and then you will bring him before me."

Vader bowed. "As you wish." He turned and strode out of the throne room.

Night had almost fallen by the time Rebels reached the overlook. The fading light was still barely adequate to let them study the installation from the ridge; at the base of the generator was a landing platform and several walkers were docked there.

"The main entrance to the control bunkers on the far side of that landing plaform," Leia said and frowned. "This isn't going to be easy."

"Hey don't worry," Han said, "Chewie and me got into places more heavily guarded than this." Chewie countered with a dismissive question. Han thought for a second, "Well, the spice vaults of Gargon, for one." Chewie shook his head and voiced his disagreement. "Of course I'm right," Han said, "now if I could just remember how I did it…" Han scratched his head, poking at his memory.

Mara spoke up: "Something about this set up feels very wrong; I mean, they've got AT-AT's out even though those clunkers would be barely able to maneuver in terrain like this. For that matter, how did we even get this close?"

Han frowned as a memory from his Carida days poked at him. "You may be onto something; as I recall, standard procedure would be to burn off a large area of the forest all around the generator precisely in order to _prevent_ people like us from getting this close. _Especially_ if they're deploying heavy mechanized units like those walkers."

"And the only reason they would _violate_ that procedure," Mara continued, "is if—,"

"—is if it's a trap," Leia finished, bitterness creeping into her voice, "And we walked right into it."

"Not yet," Luke said, "There's gotta be more than one way into this place."

Han suddenly perked up and snapped his fingers, "That's it! That's how we did it, a back door."

"We need to hurry," said Leia. "The fleet will—," she suddenly stopped and looked up at the sky; so did Luke and Mara. Han wondered what was going on, then spotted a shuttle coming in for a landing at the platform.

Luke, Leia and Mara exchanged worried glances and all at once began speaking:

"It _has_ to be—,"

"But why—,"

"He must have—,"

Irritated, Han said: "Would one of the members of the Jedi Hive Mind please translate for the rest of us poor mortals."

"Vader's on that shuttle," Luke said quietly.

"Great," Han said sarcastically, "as if this mission wasn't hard enough already."

With night falling, the Rebels withdrew a short distance and made a cold camp. And there Han was faced with a most bizarre situation.

"No, absolutely not," Han declared, staring incredulously at Luke and wondering what could have made him think this was a good idea. "Luke, if you just go up and surrender, then they'll _know_ that we're here."

"Vader _already_ knows that we're here," Luke replied, "he can sense my presence, as well as Leia's and Mara."

"Even assuming that we _find_ another entrance," Leia continued, "what do you think will happen if Vader is present when the team attacks?"

"So deal with him," Han said, "I may not know much about the Force, but it'll be three-against-one; I like those odds."

"Vader has faced worse," said Mara softly, "And against Jedi who had been trained _all of their lives_. We don't have a choice."

"You _support_ this idiocy?" Han asked her incredulously.

Mara sighed. "I don't like the idea anymore than you, but we _have_ to remove Darth Vader from the equation if the strike team is to have any chance of completing its mission."

"And how do you know that he won't just kill you?"

Luke just shrugged. "He won't."

"But how can you be _sure_?"

"He _won't_ ," Leia repeated. "Just trust me on this Han, it's a…Jedi thing."

Han crossed his arms for a moment, glaring at all three of them; then he threw up his hands with a sigh. "Fine, I can't stop you from going, even though I think that this is ridiculous."

" _Han_ ," Leia said, softening her tone and touching his shoulder. They shared a single, long and tender kiss. Then the three Jedi discarded their blasters and camo, then disappeared into the forest.

Darth Vader stood in the corridor, looking out into the verdant forest surrounding the landing platform as an AT-AT walker approached in the darkness. The Force was alive with anticipation as they drew ever nearer. Finally the door swung aside; an Imperial commander and a half a dozen Stormtroopers stepped out with Luke, Leia and Mara. The young Jedi gazed at Vader with complete calm as they approached.

"These are Rebels that surrendered to us," the commander said, "Although they deny it, I believe that there may be more of them, and I request permission to conduct a further search of the area." Vader turned from the Jedi to the commander as he continued, "They were armed with these." The commander held up a hand with three lightsabers; Vader held out his own hand and commander placed them in it.

"Good work, Commander," Vader said, "Leave us. Conduct your search and bring their companions to me."

"Yes, my lord," the commander said with a respectful bow. Then he and his soldiers withdrew, leaving Vader and the three Jedi alone.

"The Emperor has been expecting you," Vader said.

"We know, Father," Luke said.

Vader glanced at Luke for a moment, then at Leia. "So, you have accepted the truth."

"We have accepted the truth," Leia said, "that you were once Anakin Skywalker, a great Jedi and—,"

"That name," Vader said, turning to face her, "no longer has any meaning for me."

"It is the name of your true self, you've only forgotten," Luke said, "I know there is good in you. The Emperor hasn't driven it from you fully. That's why you couldn't destroy me." Luke rested his cuffed arms on the railing. "That's why you won't bring us to your Emperor now."

Vader almost smiled through his mask at Luke's use of Jedi voice-manipulation; he clipped Leia and Mara's lightsabers to his belt and examined Luke's in more detail, finally igniting it. "I see you have constructed a new lightsaber." Vader shut it off, attached it to his belt and then gave Leia's a similar examination. Both, Vader noted, bore a strong resemblance to Kenobi's old weapon. "Your skills are complete. Indeed, you are powerful, as the Emperor has foreseen." Vader clipped it to his belt and turned to Mara. "And you, Jade, the Emperor is most eager to have his Hand back at his side."

Neither Luke nor Leia even blinked. So they _did_ know who she was.

"Nice try," Mara said with a huff as she rolled her eyes and crossed her arms over her ample chest. "But we both know that if the Emperor is eager about anything, it's to give me the Bevel Lemelisk treatment." Bevel Lemelisk was the chief designer of both Death Stars and the Emperor had killed him seven times—each time in a different way—using the Dark Side to transfer his consciousness to a new clone body right before his last one expired. All to punish him for the loss of the first Death Star at Yavin.

Vader turned away from her, not bothering to argue the point; especially because she wasn't wrong.

"Come with us," Luke asked.

"Obi-Wan once thought as you do," said Vader, "You don't know the power of the Dark Side. I must obey my master."

"I will not turn," said Luke.

"Nor will I," Leia said, "And you will be forced to kill us."

Once again, Vader was struck by just how much Leia was like _her_ ; so passionate and full of life, so idealistic and unwilling to buckle in the face of pressure. "If that is your destiny…" That was not his wish, he did not want to destroy the last bits of _her_ , but they were strong and if it came to blows…he could no longer hold back as he had on Bespin. If they would not turn, then they were of no use to him.

"Search your feelings, Father," Luke said, "You can't do this. I feel the conflict within you. Let go of your hate."

"It is too late for me, Son," Vader replied. Then he signaled to some distant Stormtroopers. "The Emperor will show you the true nature of the Force. He is your master now."

"Then my father is truly dead," Luke said. Leia just glared at Vader, her own feelings on the topic obvious from her silence. Vader turned back to face the forest as the Stormtroopers arrived to take them away.

In deep space near Sullust, the Rebel Fleet stretched as far as the eye could see; onboard the _Millennium Falcon_ , Lando led a group of Starfighters out to the tip of the fleet.

"Admiral," Lando said over the comm. "We're in position, all fighters accounted for."

"Proceed with the countdown," Ackbar replied, "All groups assume attack coordinates."

Lando's Sullustan co-pilot, Nien Numb, said something to Lando in his native language.

"Don't worry," Lando reassured him, "my friend's down there. He'll have that shield down on time." But then muttered to himself, "or this'll be the shortest offensive of all time." So far the Rebel Alliance had survived because it had acted like a guerilla force, and now they were about to do the very thing that a guerilla force was never supposed to do: engage the enemy like a traditional army. The Imperial military had so far only won when it had been able to force the Rebels into a conventional engagement like at Derra IV and Hoth; otherwise, they had been always losing. The Rebels, except for such battles like Derra IV and Hoth, had been always winning; but now they had been drawn into the open to fight a battle on the Empire's terms and if they lost this battle, they lost the war. But they had no choice for the war would be lost anyway if the new Death Star was completed.

"All craft," Ackbar announced on a fleet-wide broadcast, "Prepare to jump into hyperspace on my mark."

"All right, standby." When the signal light flashed, Ackbar's mark, Lando pulled a lever and the _Millennium Falcon_ jumped into hyperspace, followed quickly by the Starfighters, _Home One_ and the rest of the Rebel fleet.

* * *

' _Something is wrong_ ', Luke thought. They weren't heading up to the Death Star. Instead Vader's shuttle was taking them towards the Imperial fleet; specifically towards one ship in the Imperial fleet, he realized, one that was painted jet-black and that was even more massive than the Executor.

"No," Mara whispered, suddenly overcome with dread, "It can't be—, it's not completed yet—."

"It wasn't completed at the time you defected, Emperor's Hand," Vader taunted her, "But your actions not only angered the Emperor, they also inspired him to make as much of your information out of date as possible; and so he ordered resources diverted to finally complete the _Eclipse_." The diversion of resources had delayed numerous other projects, including its sister-ship and the follow-up Sovereign-class, but it had paid off.

"The Eclipse?" Luke and Leia asked.

"The Emperor's personal flagship," said Mara, "it was under construction for as long as both Death Stars combined and kept getting delayed because of improvements in technology."

"Something seems odd about its apperance." Luke frowned

"The entire ship is built around a superlaser beam," Mara said with a sigh.

"Impossible," Leia said. "Not even that monstrosity could hold a weapon capable of destroying entire planets."

"It's not a planet-buster," Mara said, "it's not even as powerful as one of the component beams in the Death Star's superlaser, but it's still powerful enough to penetrate any planetary shield and sear entire continents; it might even be capable of cracking open a planet's crust, effectively rendering it uninhabitable."

Leia gasped. Even that reduced ability was still overkill for the purposes of the Tarkin Doctrine.

(*)

A small group of Imperial officers were gathered around the Emperor's throne, including Admirals Piett and Chiraneau and Captain Sarklin, but all attention was on the sole non-human in the group, a Chiss man who wore the white uniform reserved to the Emperor's Grand Admirals of which there were only ever twelve. After Zaarin's execution following his pathetic attempt at a coup, Thrawn had been promoted to take his place.

"Your Majesty," Thrawn said, "This plan of yours is extremely flawed."

The other Imperial officers looked at Thrawn with shock. No one spoke to the Emperor that way. They turned to Palpatine, expecting him to kill the man on the spot. But they didn't know that one of the reasons Palpatine kept Thrawn around was precisely because he was willing to be so blunt with his opinions...and because those opinions were very seldom wrong.

"You have backed the Rebels into a corner, and a cornered animal fights far more ferociously than one still capable of escape. As soon as the Rebels realize that this station's primary weapon is operational, they will move their entire fleet into point-blank range of the Star Destroyers."

"That would be suicide," Piett exclaimed.

"Under normal circumstances," corrected Thrawn. "But these are not normal circumstances. The Rebels have no choice but to launch this assault and with their retreat blocked by the Interdictors, it is far less suicidal to engage our fleet in a point-blank slugging match than it is to just sit there and be wiped out one by one by the Death Star. They will see it as buying time for their ground team to complete their part of the mission."

"The Rebel ground team is even more outmatched than their fleet," another officer said with a scowl.

"In numbers, yes," said Thrawn, "But the Rebels are very good at covert operations, they wouldn't have survived this long if they weren't, and they are quite willing to carry out a suicide operation if there is no choice. And there isn't any choice in this case because this is their only chance to destroy the new Death Star as once it is completed, it will be impervious to any known attack short of another superlaser or another weapon of equivalent destructive power, which they do not have."

And so what do you suggest, Grand Admiral?"

Grand Admiral Thrawn began to sketch out his own plan.

(*)

Luke tried to maintain his focus and composure but that was getting progressively harder to do the closer they got to the Emperor, for a black storm was raging within him, showing him brief murky images of possible futures both repugnant and compelling. Kill the Emperor, and then what? Destroy Vader and then what? Take up their power for himself? Who could stop them? Who could stop _him_?

Luke pushed the thoughts aside but they left a cold sweat on his brow.

The turbolift door opened and they walked out into the throne room; the Royal Guards took up station near the door while they walked across the ante-chamber and up the stairs to stand before the throne: Vader, Luke and Mara, all dressed in black, Leia in pure white, stood beneath the malignant gaze of the Galactic Emperor.

Vader bowed and the Emperor motioned him to rise. "Welcome, young Jedi," the Emperor said with a gracious smile. "I have been expecting you." They stared back him, brazenly and defiantly, and the Emperor continued, "You no longer need those." He gestured with his finger and their binders fell to the ground.

Luke looked down at his hands, free now he could reach out for the Emperor's throat, crush his windpipe in an instant, but the Emperor's behavior had him confused. The Emperor was unarmed, he could strike but aggression was part of the dark side. Could he use darkness judiciously and then put it away? Yoda and Obi-Wan's words came back to him. _'Do not be fooled by appearances' 'Do not underestimate the powers of the Emperor'. 'Once you start down the dark path, forever will it dominate your destiny'_.

His mind was once again awash with images of possible futures, taunting him: kill the Emperor, kill Vader, _become_ Vader. The moment convulsed with possibilities. Mara grabbed Luke's hand, catching his gaze.

The moment passed.

This was not Leia's first time seeing the Emperor, she had first met him when Bail had introduced her to the Imperial court; even then Leia had been quite unnerved by the Emperor, as if something had been slowly eating him from inside. Now that she was a Jedi, she could see that this was not that far from the truth for every ounce of the Emperor's being was permeated with darkness, like a black hole. She fought the temptation to embrace the darkness—to end these abominations who had destroyed her world and so many other lives; she could set it all right, and in place of the old Emperor would rise a new Empress—not dark and wizened but beautiful and terrible, both feared and loved, striking despair into all who saw her…

Leia shook her head, pushing away the vision but it didn't vanish completely, only retreating into the dark corners of her mind.

"I am looking forward to completing your training. In time you will call me, 'master'." He turned to Mara. "One of you already has, and will again soon enough."

Mara felt herself buckling under the Emperor's gaze, but she refused to look away; she would _not_ go back to that. Not _ever_.

"You are gravely mistaken," Luke said, "You will not convert us as you did Vader."

The Emperor stood and approached them. For the first time Luke saw the Emperor's face behind his hood, saw and could almost _smell_ the decay and corruption on him. "Oh no, my young Jedi. You will find that it is you who are mistaken…about a great many things."

"Their lightsabers," Vader said as he held up the weapons. The Emperor took Luke's first and examined, then did the same with Leia's and finally Mara's.

"Ah, yes, a Jedi's weapon." He turned to Luke and Leia. "Much like your father's. By now you must know that your father can never be turned from the dark side. So will it be with you."

"You're wrong," said Leia, "Soon we'll all be dead." Any ship could be destroyed, even this horrid monstrosity.

The Emperor laughed a most sinister and horrible laugh.

"Perhaps you refer to the imminent attack of your Rebel fleet." Luke and Leia both briefly looked down, briefly and inwardly reeling, but then steadied themselves. "I assure you, we are quite safe from your friends, here."

The Emperor turned to walk back to his throne.

"Your overconfidence is your weakness."

The Emperor briefly turned back to face him. "Your faith in your friends is yours." And with that the Emperor returned to his throne.

Vader turned to them. "It is pointless to resist."

The Emperor continued his gloating, but with a trace of anger in his voice. "Everything that has transpired has done so according to _my_ design. Your friends, up there on the Sanctuary Moon, are walking into a trap. As is your Rebel fleet." Luke and Leia's faces visibly twitched. Seeing this, the Emperor pressed on. "It was _I_ who allowed the Alliance to know the location of the shield generator. It is quite safe from your pitiful little band. An entire legion of my best troops awaits them." The Emperor leaned forward in his throne, "Oh, I'm afraid the deflector shield will be quite operational when your friends arrive." And then the Emperor started laughing again.

(*)

On the bridge of the _Millennium Falcon_ Lando pushed the lever and dropped the ship out of hyperspace, followed by the rest of the Rebel fleet.

"All wings report in," Lando said over the comm.

"Red Leader, standing by," said Wedge, leader of the X-Wing contingent.

"Blue Leader, standing by," said the leader of the B-Wing contingent.

"Gray Leader, standing by," said the leader of the Y-Wing contingent.

"Green Leader, standing by," said the leader of the A-Wing contingent.

"Lock S-foils in attack positions," Wedge ordered. Every X-Wing and B-Wing in the fleet, almost as one, extended their S-foils.

From _Home One_ came a broadcast from Admiral Ackbar, "May the Force be with us."

Lando and Nien Numb were puzzling over their sensor readings.

"That can't be right," said Lando, "We've got to be able to get some kind of reading on that shield, up or down." Nien Numb pointed at the control panel and shook his head, uttering reply in his language. "Well, how could be they could be jamming us if they don't….we're coming." Lando grimaced as the full implications sunk in and hit the comm. "Break off the attack, the shield is still up."

"I got no reading," said Wedge, "Are you sure?"

"Pull up!" Lando ordered, "All craft pull up!"

The _Falcon_ and its fighters banked hard. Most avoided hitting the deflector shield but a few were slower on the mark and nicked it, spinning out of control and exploding. No one paused to look back.

The bridge of _Home One_ was chaos; alarms blared as it and the other Rebel capital ships began swerving in a desperate attempt to halt their forward momentum. Ackbar spoke urgently into the comm. "Take evasive action. Green Group, stick close to holding sector MV-7—," Ackbar's flurry of orders was interrupted when a Mon Calamari controller turned away from his screen and called out:

"Admiral, we have enemy ships in sector forty-seven."

Ackbar's reply was as a simple as it was redundant: "It's a trap!"

"Fighters, coming in," Lando said. An armada of Imperial TIE Fighters, TIE Interceptors, TIE Bombers and even a few TIE Avengers, TIE Defenders, Skipray Blastboats, Assault Gunboats and Missile Boats engulfed the Rebel fighters.

"There's too many of them," one Rebel exclaimed. Pyrotechnic displays soon played over the shields of the Rebel capital ships as they took hits from concussion missiles and proton torpedoes launched by the Bombers, Avengers and Defenders.

"Accelerate to attack speed," said Lando, "Draw their fire away from the cruisers."

"Copy Gold Leader," Wedge replied and the battle was on.

(*)

"Come, Jedi," The Emperor sneered from his throne, gesturing at the viewport from which the raging battle was little more than pinpricks and flashes of light. "See for yourselves." Luke, Leia and Mara stepped forward to look through the window. Darth Vader moved with them and stood beside the throne. "From here," the Emperor continued, "You will witness the final destruction of the Alliance and the end of your insignificant Rebellion."

Mara took one look, then closed her eyes and looked away toward the floor. Leia could only stare in stupefied horror at the distant specks of the Rebel fleet. Luke tore himself away and caught a glimpse of their lightsabers sitting on the armrests of the Emperor's throne. Noticing his gaze, the Emperor began patting Luke's lightsaber.

"You want this, don't you?" The Emperor taunted him. "The hate is swelling in you now. Take your Jedi weapon. Use it. I am unarmed. Strike me down with it. Give in to your anger." Luke just stared at the weapon, breathing heavily. "With each passing moment you make yourself more my servant."

"No," Luke turned away back to the window.

"It is unavoidable. It is your destiny. You, like your father, are now…mine!"

Luke tried to center himself in the light…and instead drowned in the dark; he had never felt so lost.

(*)

"Watch yourself, Wedge," Lando said; the battle raged all around them. "Three from above."

"Red Three, Red Two," Wedge ordered, "Pull in."

"Got it," Red Two replied.

"Three of them coming in, twenty degrees," said Red Three.

"Cut to the left," said Wedge, "I'll take the leader." They did so and Wedge shot down one of the TIEs. The other two veered off. "They're heading for the Medical Frigate."

Lando put the _Falcon_ into a complete flip, allowing his gunners to pick off the remaining two. As they came about Lando spotted the Imperial fleet, including the massive Super Star Destroyer _Executor_ as well as another even more massive ship, and frowned. "Only the fighters are attacking, I wonder what those Star Destroyers are waiting for?" It did not make any sense in light of standard Imperial tactics.

Onboard the _Executor_ Admiral Piett's officers were wondering the same thing. Piett himself was wondering why Grand Admiral Thrawn, even though he'd been placed in overall command, was in the auxiliary control room.

"We're in attack position now, sir," Captain Sarkli reported.

"Hold here," Piett replied.

"We're not going to attack?" Sarkli asked

"Our job is to keep the Rebel's from escaping," Piett said, "the Emperor has something special planned for them." Time to see if Thrawn really was as brilliant as the Emperor thought he was.

(*)

"As you can see," the Emperor was saying, "your friends have failed. Now witness the firepower of my fully armed and operational battle station." Luke, Leia and Mara all turned to face the Emperor in renewed horror as the Emperor pressed a button on his throne, "Moff Jerjerrod, fire at will!"

Deep within the bowels of the Death Star, Jerjerrod gave the order he had been waiting for: "Commence Primary Ignition." The gunners manipulated their controls and then finally reported back.

"We have primary ignition."

"Fire!"

From the concave dish on the completed portion of the Death Star came a series of tributary beams that met and formed a single beam which then reached out and destroyed the Rebel Star Cruiser _Liberty_.

Lando and Nien Numb were startled and caught off guard by the destruction.

"That blast came from the Death Star," Lando said, "That thing's operational. _Home One_ , this Gold Leader—,"

"We saw it," said Ackbar mournfully, "All craft prepare to retreat."

"We won't get another chance at this Admiral," Lando said.

"We have no choice, General Calrissian," Ackbar replied, "Our cruisers can't repel firepower of that magnitude."

"Han will have that shield down," Lando insisted, "We've got to give him more time."

But then time ran out; the _Eclipse_ fired its own superlaser, destroying another Rebel cruiser.

Lando got a crazy idea.

(*)

It took far longer than Han would have liked, but the Rebel strike team did eventually find the back door on the far side of the ridge. Unfortunately it was under _heavy_ guard, with several AT-ST's and a mixed company of Stormtroopers, Navy Troopers and Scout Troopers.

"Kriff it," Han said with a scowl. This was _exactly_ what he'd been afraid would happen when the Jedi just went and surrendered.

"We're out of time," Derlin said, checking his chronometer, "if the Fleet kept to its schedule, they should be here by now. We can't afford to mount a prolonged guerilla campaign against such a large garrison."

"We don't have to destroy the entire bunker to bring down the shield," Han noted.

"The projector dish," Derlin nodded. They'd seen it on the flight in. "But how do we get to it?"

"We use the shuttle."

"Even if we could get back in time," said Derlin, "We'd be lucky to get one pass with its weapons before it was shot down by the garrison's TIE fighters."

"I wasn't thinking of anyone being _in_ the shuttle," Han corrected and Derlin's eyes widened as he finally saw the plan Han was considering.

(*)

It was very quiet in the Emperor's throne room, except for his gloating.

"Your fleet is lost," the Emperor said, "And your friends on the Endor moon will not survive. There is no escape, my young Jedi. The Alliance will die…as will your friends."

Luke was visibly shaking and trembling, having difficulty continuing to contain himself. Leia was standing absolutely rigid, still apparently engrossed in despair over the battle, while Mara's gaze was still toward the ground and away from everyone.

"Good," the Emperor said, "I can feel your anger. I am defenseless. Take your weapon. Strike me down with all of our hatred and your journey toward the Dark Side will be complete." Still Luke looked away. The Emperor pressed a button on his throne, "Commander Jerjerrod, should the Rebels manage to blow up the shield generator, you will turn the Death Star on the Endor Moon and destroy it."

"Your Highness?" Jerjerrod's voice came over from the receiver, "but we have soldiers stationed on—,"

"You will destroy it!" The Emperor hissed.

"Yes, Your Highness."

"NO!"

Leia abruptly turned and held out her hand; her lightsaber leapt into her hand; she ignited it and brought its blue blade downward towards the Emperors head…only to be blocked when Vader's crimson blade flashed into view an inch above the Emperor's face, bathing his grin with sparks.

Leia stepped back and turned to face her father.

Vader extended his own blade to face his daughter.

Father and daughter circled.

Luke was only a few seconds slower than Leia in reacting, calling his own lightsaber and igniting it. Now, Vader distracted, there was nothing stopping him from ending the Emperor. But Luke's emerald blade was halted when the Emperor raised his hands and shot out beams of Sith Lightning that Luke caught on his blade. But Luke could not bring the lightsaber any closer and was in fact being forced further and further away; suddenly he found himself flying across the room to hit the wall, which briefly dazed him.

Now Mara called her own lightsaber, only to have her own attack also blocked by Sith Lightning. But the Emperor's lightning quickly overwhelmed her defense and forced her to her knees as she screamed in pain.

The Emperor raised his hand in a signal and two more people, clad in black, jumped down from the gantry where they'd been concealed in shadows; a pair of lightsabers were ignited—both blue.

The new figures stepped out of the shadows…and Luke recognized both of them. One was held by Shira Brie and the other…was himself.

_'No_ ' Luke blinked. It had his face, but yellow eyes like the Emperor. Palpatine laughed.

"Yes, young Skywalker," he said, "He is your clone, grown from the hand you lost on Bespin and using the lightsaber you lost there."

Luke held up his green lightsaber, expecting the clone to attack him…but instead Shira charged him with a powerful slash that he was barely able to block. As he did he noted that Shira's eyes had turned yellow as well. But he didn't have time to think about that because she attacked again and again.

Mara held up her lightsaber just in time to block the clones's first attack but it almost unbalanced her, almost knocked her back down. Mara flipped over the clone and began falling back towards the other end of the room.

(*)

The Death Star and the _Eclipse_ fired again and picked off two more Rebel cruisers.

"Yes, I said closer," Lando was arguing desperately with Ackbar over the comm., "Move as close as you can and engage those Star Destroyers at point-blank range."

"At that close range," Ackbar replied, "We won't last long against Star Destroyers."

"We'll last longer than we will against that Death Star," Lando pointed out, "And we might just take a few of them with us."

"And what about that new Star Destroyer?" Ackbar said, "It may still be able to fire at us even at that range."

"Not for long," Lando replied, "something that big doesn't turn on a decicred."

Seeing the point, Ackbar conceded the argument and began passing orders. The Rebel cruisers advanced headlong towards the Imperial Star Destroyers into point-blank range.

Deep in the bowels of the _Executor_ , in the auxiliary control room, Grand Admiral Thrawn coordinated the battle; at his direction a squad of TIE Fighters intercepted a group of Y-Wings before they could launch a salvo of proton torpedoes at one of Star Destroyers. The Rebel firing patterns abruptly shifted and they began concentrating their fire on the _Eclipse_ even as their cruisers maneuvered to get out of its superlasers firing arc while remaining at point-blank range. Smart of them, Thrawn conceded, for even without its superlaser the _Eclipse_ was the most heavily armed ship present; still, it would not be enough. At Thrawn's order many of the Star Destroyers rotated slightly to both protect their vulnerable bellies and also to bring more of their weapons to bear on the Rebel cruisers. This maneuver had the added advantage of eliminating half of the advantages of the Rebel's tactic.

* * *

 

Father and daughter circled.

Leia held her lightsaber high above her head, reading to attack. Vader held his in a lateral stance. Leia brought her blade straight down and when Vader moved to parry, Leia feinted and cut low. Vader counterparried, letting the impact direct his sword toward her threat. Leia met the riposte and stepped back. Again, they circled.

Vader was impressed with her speed, pleased even, but she was not ready yet to destroy the Emperor and so needed further tutelage.

Leia attacked again, much more aggressively, advancing in a flurry of lunges—each of which were met by Vader's saber. The Dark Lord retreated a step at every slash, only once attempting a riposte that Leia batted away and used to push her back yet again. Vader lost his footing on the stairs and tumbled backwards.

Leia stood at the stop of the stairs, heady with her own power; she could do it, now, she knew it; she could kill Vader. Kill him. Kill the Emperor, rule the galaxy. She didn't try to bury the thought this time but reveled it and gorged herself on it, allowed it to obliterate all other thoughts. She started forward.

Vader stood, astonishment turning to humiliation, surprise, fear and then finally anger. He lunged up the stairs and Leia met his blade. Again and again, they battered away at each other, enthralled in the throes of their rage.

(*)

Gripping her purple lightsaber with both hands, Mara tried to press the attack to force the clone back but the clone riposted viciously; his next strike would have taken one of her hands if she hadn't pulled it back from the lightsaber and so instead it severed the hilt in half. Mara responded with a rising kick in the clone's stomach that turned into a disengage, leaping up onto the overhead gantry, dropping the rest of the now useless hilt as she did so.

The clone threw his lightsaber towards her, it sliced through the supports holding the gantry up, causing it to tilt down. Mara lost her footing and fell into the shadows underneath the stairs. Mara spotted the lightsaber clattered to the ground, still active, and called it to her hand.

Mara's eyes hardened but she pushed away the whispers of the Dark Side and leapt upwards, arcing back over the clone; the blue lightsaber moved in a blur and when Mara landed behind it, bent down on one knee and breathing heavily, the clone's body separated into two pieces along the cut she had made through it from torso to shoulder.

Luke abruptly went on the offensive, riposting savagely against Shira's latest attack and forcing her to step back; Luke advanced, a blow with every step and every step a blow. Methodically and relentlessly, Luke backed Shira into a corner and then smashed through her defense...taking off her arm in the process, then followed through by severing her head. Luke turned towards the approaching Mara, eyes still full of rage, and raised his lightsaber.

"Luke!" Mara exclaimed, desperately blocking his unexpected attacks, "Stop! It's me! Stop!"

Their lightsaber blades, blue and green, locked for one moment and Mara stared into his eyes, trying to snap him out of it.

"Yes, yes," the Emperor exclaimed, "Use your aggressive feelings, let the hate flow through you."

Luke faltered for a moment and then realized what was happening. He stepped back and lowered his lightsaber, horrified at what he'd done...and _almost_ done, and then he saw Leia and Vader.

(*)

Leia was attacking with a frenzy she had never knowing, pressing Vader back and pursuing him relentlessly. Blow upon blow, stroke by stroke, Leia pummeled Vader closer and closer to a seemingly bottomless shaft to the power core. Vader was finally forced to his knees and raised his blade to block yet another onslaught…and Leia slashed Vader's right hand off at the wrist.

The hand, along with the attached bits of metal and wires, clattered over into the chasm along with Vader's lightsaber. Leia stood above Vader, holding him at the point of her glowing blade, she raised it for a killing blow…that was interrupted by a green blade held by Luke, a focused and determined expression on his face.

Leia savagely turned on her brother and began attacking him with the same unstoppable fury she'd just used on Vader; like his father, Luke was forced backwards towards the stairs.

Mara raised her own lightsaber only to be forced to turn it to block an assault of Sith Lightning from the approaching Emperor that forced her back to her knees and sent her tumbling down the stairs.

Leia cut through Luke's artificial hand, sending it and his lightsaber flying, and now held her brother at the tip of her blade.

The Emperor laughed. "Good, good; now kill them and take your father's place at my side!"

Leia blinked and then stared at Luke, then at Vader, then at the Emperor, then back at Luke.

' _No!'_ She would not give in to the darkness; the darkness that was within Vader, within the Emperor…and within her. The darkness that she hated and that wanted to consume her as well. She knew now that you could not use darkness to fight darkness, else it would also consume you. But now she would destroy it the only way she could: by renouncing it.

She straightened up, shut off her lightsaber and tossed it aside.

Mara came up beside her and they helped Luke to stand, then turned to face the Emperor.

"Never!" Leia said, "We will never turn to the dark side."

"You've failed, Your Highness," Luke continued.

"We are Jedi," Mara finished.

The Emperor's glee turned into rage.

"So be it…Jedi!"

(*)

Han snatched up his comlink and spoke into it: "Hurry up, Goldenrod; we're out of time."

"It's done Master Solo," said Threepio. "Artoo has programmed the shuttle autopilot and it is has taken off."

The wait seemed to last forever but finally they spotted the shuttle _Tydirium_ zoom overhead and towards the generator dish. As expected the garrison TIE's quickly intercepted it but the shuttle's shields were up and they lasted long enough. The _Tydirium_ collided with the deflector dish in a massive explosion.

(*)

Onboard _Home One_ , Ackbar was relieved by the sudden change in sensor readings. "The shield is down. Commence attack on the Death Star's main reactor."

"We're on our way," Lando replied and banked the _Falcon_ towards the Death Star. "Red Group, Gold Group, follow me." And then he laughed, saying to his co-pilot, "I told you they'd do it."

(*)

In the auxiliary bridge of the _Executor_ Grand Admiral Thrawn frowned at how the Rebels had somehow, once again, beaten the odds. He pressed a button on his chair.

"Baron Fel, this is Grand Admiral Thrawn."

"Fel, here," came a gruff voice. "What is it Admiral?"

"The Death Star's shield is down and several Rebel fighters have broken off from the battle; send one of your squadrons to stop them."

"At once Admiral."

(*)

"If you will not be turned," the Emperor was saying, raising his hands towards them, "then you will be destroyed."

Bolts of Sith Lightning leapt from his fingertips. The three young Jedi linked together through the Force…and caught the bolts with their own hands, deflecting them away. The Emperor began ramping up the power and speed of his assaults but the stalemate continued. Any one of them alone would have been swiftly overwhelmed, but the three of them together could more than match even the Emperor's power, their own power further augmented because they had a strength that the old Jedi had not possessed, and had in fact denied, and one that the Emperor did not understand.

That strength was the strength of love. Not merely compassion, as the Jedi of old, but love. In Luke and Leia's case, the love of two siblings; in Luke and Mara's case that of lovers; in Leia and Mara's case, the love of a friendship forged in adversity. The old Jedi had also felt those emotions but they had denied them, tried to control them and suppress them; that had crippled them and turned them into a parody of their enemy. And just as the Sith had once defeated the Jedi by remaking themselves, now were the scales flipped and the Dark Lord of the Sith was facing a new breed of Jedi.

Except that unlike the old Jedi, Palpatine was too fundamentally arrogant to recognize or admit that he had made the same mistake that they had—indeed no longer was he even capable of admitting that he might have made that mistake; both he and Vader had assumed that Luke, Leia and Mara would have been taught to repress their emotions instead of accepting and even, to a degree, embracing them. The old Jedi had been afraid of facing the dark and so had tried to deny the battle completely; but fear of the dark is still fear and in fearing the dark the old Jedi had given it power over themselves. But that was not the case of the new Jedi, for they had accepted their own darkness, faced it and gone past it.

Darth Vader had slowly gotten to his feet and limped over to his master's side, watching the struggle; watched his son and daughter resist his master and at last he acted. Vader grabbed the Emperor from behind, picked him up and began carrying him over to the chasm. Vader was weaker than he'd ever been before and became still weaker when some of the Emperor's Sith Lightning began spraying back him. But Vader refused to be denied, refused to submit again; focused every fiber of his being, into this one act.

The Royal Guards flanking the turbolift rushed forward toward Vader and their master but Luke, Leia and Mara, still united in the Force, moved as one; they retrieved their lightsbers and cut them down.

Vader reached the chasm and, with his last bit of strength, hurled Palpatine into the abyss. Palpatine, still spewing bolts of energy, spun down and down out of sight; but then at last a distant explosion sent a rush of air billowing back out of the shaft, knocking back Vader as he tried to follow his master to the end. Luke pulled him back away from the edge of chasm, then nearly collapsed from his own exhaustion.

(*)

The _Millennium Falcon_ led a group of Rebel fighters across the surface of the Death Star to the unfinished portion. They were pursued by a dozen TIE Interceptors, each of them with the blood red stripe of the 181st Imperial Fighter Wing.

"I'm going in," said Wedge.

"Here goes nothing," Lando said.

Wedge's X-Wing led the _Falcon_ through an ever narrowing shaft, followed by four other fighters—two X-Wings, two A-Wings—plus the pursuing TIE Interceptors who kept up a constant barrage of fire at the Rebels.

"Now lock onto the strongest power source," said Lando, "it should be the power generator."

"Form up," said Wedge, "and stay alert. We could run out of space real fast."

The chase continued through the tunnel, still pursued by the TIEs; one of the X-Wings was hit from behind and exploded.

"Split up and head back to the surface," Lando told the other fighters, "And see if you can get a few of those TIE Interceptors to follow you."

"Copy Gold Leader," said Tycho Celchu, one of the A-Wing pilots and a member of Rogue Squadron. Celchu and the other two Rebel fighters peeled off into intersecting corridors, half of the TIEs followed them while the rest kept pursuing the _Falcon_ and Wedge. The main tunnel abruptly narrowed and the _Falcon_ only barely scraped through it, losing its rectenna dish in the process.

"That was too close," Lando said and his co-pilot agreed.

(*)

Luke, Leia, and Mara carried the crippled body of Vader into an Imperial shuttle; no one noticed them or the shuttles rapid departure soon thereafter. With Mara at the controls, Leia went back to be with Luke and their dying father.

"Help me take this mask off," he said.

"But you'll die," Luke replied.

"Nothing can stop that now," Vader said. "Just this once, let me look on you with my own eyes.

Slowly, hesitatingly, Leia and Luke began removing the mask. Underneath they saw the sad face of an old man, bald, beardless and scarred, with unfocused eyes and pasty-white skin. A face that had not seen the sun in over two decades. A face full of emotions: regret, anguish and shame but also love; a face full of memories: of a time long gone, a brotherhood betrayed, a dear wife, and of slavery and freedom.

All these things and more flashed in the face of Anakin Skywalker in his final moments.

"Now, go," Anakin gasped out weakly, "Leave me."

"No, I'm going to save you," Luke said.

"You already have, Luke," said Anakin, "You were right. You were right about me." And in his final breath Anakin spoke the name he hadn't allowed himself to say or think for over two decades: "Padme, my love, she was right. Padme…"

His head fell back and Anakin Skywalker, once the Dark Lord of the Sith Darth Vader, breathed his last and died.

(*)

Back at the Rebel fleet, Admiral Ackbar was continuing to direct the battle.

"We've got to give those fighters more time. Concentrate all fire on that Super Star Destroyer."

Rebel ships, including B-Wings and Skiprays, swooped in and unleashed a barrage of proton torpedoes and concussion missiles that briefly overwhelmed the already taxed shields of the _Eclipse,_ allowing several of the missiles to get through and damage the ship.

"Sir," a controller said to the captain, "We've lost our bridge deflector shield."

"Intensify the forward batteries," he ordered immediately, "I don't want anything to get through." Through the window he could see a damaged A-Wing out of control and heading towards the bridge. "Intensify forward firepower!"

"Too late!"

The A-Wing crashed into the bridge; this combined with the continued barrage on the ship set off a chain reaction that sent the Super Star Destroyer, no longer able to resist the natural gravity field caused by station the size of a celestial body, slowing falling towards the Death Star and eventually crashing into it and exploding—the impact enough to actually jolt the battle station and set off internal explosions, plunging the station and its crew into chaos.

A lone X-Wing and the _Millennium Falcon_ , still pursued by a pair of TIE Interceptors, finally reached the reactor core.

"There it is," Wedge said.

"All right, Wedge," said Lando, "Go for the power regulator on the north tower."

"Copy Gold Leader," said Wedge, "I'm already on my way out."

Wedge fired a series of proton torpedoes at the power regulator, causing a series of small explosions, and then headed out. Lando fired the _Falcon_ 's concussion missiles, which hit directly at the center of the main reactor. Wincing at the dangerously close explosion, Lando maneuvered the _Falcon_ after Wedge, through the winding superstructure just ahead of the escalating chain reaction of explosions.

On the bridge of _Home One_ , Admiral Ackbar gave the order. "Move the fleet away from the Death Star."

Wedge's X-Wing managed to escape the Death Star ahead of the explosions; the _Falcon_ almost did not make it but finally shot out of the exploding superstructure only a moment before the entire station exploded.

Lando and Nien Numb laughed and cheered in relief...a relief that was very short-lived when they spotted the Rebel fleet still engaged in battle with the Imperial fleet over Endor.

* * *

Han Solo watched as the shuttle came in for a landing in the forest clearing. Once it set down and the ramp lowered, he led the commandos and the two droids up the ramp, then hesitated and did a double take at what he saw inside.

"Is that…Darth Vader?"

"He's dead," Leia simply said. "So is the Emperor, but the battle isn't over yet."

"The Imperial fleet's still fighting?" Han said.

"Not just still fighting," said Luke. "They're _winning_."

"Well can't Ackbar disengage?" Han asked.

"He's trying," said Leia. "But there are Interdictors present. And whoever his opposite number is, he's good… _very_ good." She frowned. There was something else going to too. Something was…wrong with the Force…no not wrong, but…a presence, there was a presence. Someone was using the Dark Side heavily…it felt almost like a mind-trick but on a much larger scale.

_'How is this even possible?'_

_'Size matters not?'_ Luke mentally quoted Yoda to her, though he too was unnerved by what he was sensing.

"Well let's get going, then," Han said. "No sense sticking around."

"Can we stop it?" Mara whispered to them. "Whatever or whoever 'it' is?"

"We don't even know what exactly it is or how it's being done," Leia replied also in a whisper. "Though I suppose we could…don't you dare say it Luke."

Luke sighed and nodded. Instead of taking the chairs, they sat down cross legged on the ground.

"What are you doing?" Han asked.

"A Jedi thing," Leia said. "We'll explain later, just keep the shuttle steady."

"Do you really have it to do it right this moment?"

"Yes," they chorused.

"Fine, fine," Han said and took the controls. Was it just him or were they getting even weirder?"

(*)

For four hours after the destruction of the Death Star the Battle of Endor raged. Four hours during which Ackbar had led the Rebel fleet on a mad dash towards the edge of the Interdictor web. Four hours during which the Imperial forces mercilessly hounded the Rebels, their every move anticipated and countered. Even Grand Admiral Thrawn was not that good, but he didn't have to be for he was not the only Grand Admiral present. Deep within the bowels of the _Executor_ , in Darth Vader's meditation chamber in fact, sat Grand Admiral Declann.

Each of the Emperor's Grand Admiral's had their own specialty and whereas Thrawn had the ability to devise tactics that defeated an enemy psychologically as well as physically, Grand Admiral Declann was a Dark Side Adept trained to use Battle Meditation to demoralize enemies and improve the coordination of allies. Declann's meditation had briefly faltered with the Emperor's death but he had since renewed it with a vengeance.

But now Declann's vision of the battle began to falter again. It had started so subtly that at first he hadn't even noticed. Someone else—multiple someone else's—were using the Light Side to counter him. Although they lacked his experience and indeed seemed to not really understand what they were doing, they were each far more powerful in the Force than he was. Furthermore, although they were inexperienced, two of the three Jedi had the particular talent of learning very quickly.

That gift was how Anakin had quickly surpassed many of his peers, though it had also been one of his downfalls because he had relied too heavily on it and had not put in as much practice as he should have. That same gift was also how his children, Luke and Leia, had picked up the ways of the Force and their skill with a lightsaber so quickly—their fighting styles had literally been a mirror of his own. And now Luke and Leia were using that gift to see what Declann was doing and how they might emulate it with the Light Side for their own allies. One on one they wouldn't have made much of a difference, but working together they each reinforced one another.

Grand Admiral Thrawn turned his gaze from his repeater displays when the door slid open and Grand Admiral Declann walked in; his face was beaded with sweat and drawn with lines from strain.

"Why have you stopped your meditation?" Thrawn asked.

"The Jedi who killed the Emperor are disrupting my concentration. Look at the battle." Thrawn turned back to the displays and frowned. A break had suddenly appeared in the Imperial formation; Thrawn started passing orders but the Rebels were already making straight for it, while the Imperials responded stiffly and more slowly than they should have and with a bit of confusion.

"Where are the Jedi," Thrawn asked.

Declann closed his eyes and his face contorted as if he was trying to remember something. Eyes still closed, his hand came up and pointed at a shuttle flying towards the Rebel fleet. "There!"

Thrawn pressed a stud on his chair. "Baron Fel, take as many of your fighters as you can and break off from your current engagement; there is a Lambda-class shuttle approaching the Rebel fleet, on it are the people who murdered the Emperor. Destroy it at once."

"Understood, Admiral," Fel gruffly replied, also sounding under a bit of a strain. "Fel out."

On the displays the 181st began breaking off and heading towards the shuttle but so did many Rebel fighters.

(*)

"We've got incoming," Han announced, powering the shuttle's shields to maximum. "Are you Jedi done yet?" When he got no answer, he turned to see them still sitting on the floor meditating, their faces beaded with sweat. "That would be a no." Although the shuttle's shields could take a beating from Starfighter-quality weapons, or at least from laser cannons, not being able to maneuver severely limited his options.

Han gunned the throttle as much as possible and the shuttle shot forward. The TIE Interceptors, however, were many times faster and easily kept pace, pounding the shuttle's shields with their laser cannons. Warning alarms blared in the cockpit as the shields started to flicker but then the firing stopped and the TIE's were forced to break off when X-Wings and A-Wings arrived and engaged them, a dogfight breaking out all around the shuttle even as its course carried it into the midst of the Rebel fleet, which was itself finally starting to emerge from the mass shadows produced by the Interdictors, which could not reposition very quickly with their gravity well generators engaged.

Finally, with flickers of pseudomotion the battered remnants of the Rebel fleet jumped to hyperspace.

"They should not have been able to get that far," Thrawn said. "They should not have been able to escape."

"You underestimate the Jedi at your own peril," Declann replied.

Thrawn sat back and steepled his fingers. "Even with their escape, even with the death of the Emperor and the destruction of the Death Star, the losses they took to do it will have them demoralized and crippled. The war may not be over yet, but it is far closer to ending."

Declann snorted. "Maybe, but the Emperor _is_ dead; so is Darth Vader, the only person who might have been capable of succeeding him. Who will rule the Empire now?"

That was a question even Thrawn had no answer to.

(*)

Had his species been capable of tears, Admiral Ackbar would surely have wept at the final report of losses taken in the Battle of Endor. Two-thirds of their capital ships were gone and the survivors were all heavily damaged—most possibly beyond repair, that any had escaped at all was remarkable; their Starfighter squadrons had suffered almost 90% casualties.

"I know it's bad," Mon Mothma said, sitting across from him in the conference room on Home One. The entire Alliance High Council was assembled to discuss how to proceed.

"It's worse," Ackbar replied. "In fact, I'm not sure if we even _can_ recover from this."

"Don't say that," she said. "As long as one Rebel lives the fight goes on."

"True," Ackbar admitted. "But this battle proved beyond any doubt _why_ my doctrine to avoid conventional engagements was correct. We may have achieved our objective, but we won't be fighting any more battles any time soon."

"There may be a way to quickly rebuild our strength," Borsk Fey'lya said.

"And how would we do that?" Ackbar asked.

"I refer to the Katana Fleet," Fey'lya replied.

"A myth," said Ackbar dismissively.

"Not so," said Fey'lya. "For I know someone who has already found it." If Fey'lya had intended to get everyone else's attention, he had succeeded beyond all expectations for the councilors were all staring at him with wide eyes, surprised and disbelieving expressions, or their species equivalent.

"What are you talking about?" General Cracken asked. In reply Fey'lya pressed a button on his comlink and the door to the conference room swung open. Everyone was even more surprised to see the man who stepped inside.

"I know we have had our differences, Mon," Garm-Bel-Iblis began. "But it is my hope that we can get past them and again work together towards our common goal of defeating the Empire."

"We do indeed have a lot to get past, Garm," Mon said, her eyes watering up in a brief show of weakness she would never have shown in public. "But the mark of a good leader is that they can admit that they were wrong, and I _was_ wrong to drive you away. We need you, now more than ever." Garm nodded and took a seat at the table. Mon Mothma wiped her eyes with her sleeve. "So tells us Garm, how did you ever find the legendary Katana Fleet?"

Garm smiled. "I only have five of the ships at the moment," he said. "But I know someone who can tell us where the rest are."

(*)

On another small forested moon in a system hidden from the Empire, Luke Skywalker set fire to a small pyre built around his father's armor. Standing next to him were Leia and Mara and as they watched, Mara took Luke's hand. Finally turning away, they saw several shimmering, smiling figures standing nearby—Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda, Anakin Skywalker and a beautiful woman that Leia and Luke quickly realized was their mother, Padme Amidala. Luke didn't know how long the figures were there but finally they vanished back into the Netherworld of the Force.

Mara finally broke the silence. "So, what now? As far as I know, there isn't any chain of succession in the Empire."

"No, there isn't," Leia agreed.

"That doesn't surprise me," said Luke. "And even with the losses they took today, the Imperial military is still many times stronger than the Alliance."

"And the Alliance took even heavier losses," Leia said sadly.

Mara added, "And there are still many Imperials who will refuse to surrender simply because Palpatine is dead; people like Sate Prestage, Ars Dangor and Ysanne Isard, to say nothing of the Grand Admirals."

"It's not over yet." Leia admitted with a sigh.

"No," Luke said. "But this is, perhaps, the beginning of the end."

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: But it is the end of this fic. I may one day write a sequel but at the moment I am very busy with my classes.  
>    
>  

**Author's Note:**

> One of the scenes is based on a picture by hitokirisan. deviantart dot com / art /Star - Wars - Test - Page - 260089613; used with permission


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